Celebration of Ultras Winners in Paris: "AI-manipulated" images?

On the night of Friday, November 7 to Saturday, November 8, the Ultras Winners 2005, supporters of Wydad Casablanca, set the streets of the French capital (15th and 16th arrondissements) on fire to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Smoke bombs and fireworks were fired on the occasion, at the level of the Grenelle and Mirabeau bridges, on both banks of the Seine, not far from the Eiffel Tower.

The images of this celebration were shared on social networks, sparking a wave of reactions. But they would have been modified, according to Loïc Dessertenne, Parisian representative of the Alliance Police Nationale union. "The images broadcast have been tampered with by AI, that’s for sure," he asserts in the columns of L’Équipe.

"On their official video, it looks like the opening of the Olympics on the Seine. It would take professional pyrotechnicians to achieve such an effect. The CCTV cameras were reviewed to compare them to the amateur videos circulating on social networks. You realize that it’s not the same scale. As far as I know, they didn’t want to provide the original video to the people who contacted them," explained Loïc Dessertenne.

According to the union representative, the images that went viral on the web have been retouched to increase their intensity. Other videos taken by amateur videographers show a slightly different effect.