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Audio By Carbonatix
It appears as though Rishabh Pant got fooled by artificial intelligence. The 27-year-old cricket player was caught liking multiple posts on Instagram from an A.I. influencer who does not exist.
His “likes” have since been removed from the photos.
Pant currently plays for the Indian national team as a wicket-keeper. He is one of the best cricket players in the world and currently serves as the vice captain for his home country in the Test format. He also captains the Lucknow Super Giants as the most expensive player in the history of the Indian Premier League with a price tag of $3.2 million. This is all before the age of 30!
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As good as Pant is at cricket, his eye for what is real or not real on the internet falls short. Fans on Instagram noticed that he liked the following posts from a “woman” named Mia Zelu:
@miazelu / Instagram
Getting caught being thirsty on main is not the worst thing in the world. We’ve all been there. Athletes often shoot their shot on social media. They are frequently put on blast for no reason. No big deal.
There is just one issue with this latest series of likes from Rishabh Pant. Mia Zelu does not exist! “She” is not real. “Her” posts are entirely generated by a computer. None of the images depict a human that walks on planet earth. The entire profile is built through artificial intelligence.
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Rishabh Pant is not the only person to be fooled by A.I. More than 150,000 people follow the Zelu account. I won’t put these folks on blast but that number includes two mutual followers on my end. Two people I personally knew in college are all-in on Mia Zelu.
If they can get got, so can Pant. And we don’t even know for certain that Pant was catfished by a computer! Maybe he knows Zelu is A.I. and liked the photos anyway. He recently partnered with Goibibo on an A.I.-focused marketing campaign so maybe his activity on social media was just him admiring the advances of Artificial Intelligence.
Either way, somebody went back and removed all of Pant’s likes from Zelu’s profile. Bot be gone!