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The image, that was based on real events, shows telltale signs of AI.You might have seen an amusing photo of a Pikachu running away from police in Turkey. It was recently shared to popular Instagram page History Reported, where it has received millions of views and over 200,000 likes.
The top two comments on the post are, “This is the best pic of 2026” and “Photo of the century.” Both of these comments are mistaken: First, the incident took place in 2025, and second, it’s not even a photo at all.
The image of Pikachu fleeing while surrounded by riot police and water cannons has been debunked by multiple reputable sources, including Reuters, Full Fact, and Hany Farid of GetReal.
The lettering on the back of the police jackets is garbled, and the biggest giveaway is the Pikachu character, which is bizarrely levitating above the ground.
Easy Mistake to Make
The reason so many people have fallen for the photo is the accompanying video. On the History Reported post, the first two slides are the AI image masquerading as a photo, but the second slide is an actual video of someone in a Pikachu costume running away from a protest.
The protest in question took place in the Turkish city of Antalya and was directed against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the Istanbul mayor and Erdogan’s political rival, Ekrem Imamoglu, was arrested in March 2025.
The person inside the Pikachu costume is a Turkish fitness influencer, Hasan Taskan, who told German publication Der Spiegel that he has no interest in politics but figured that people needed a laugh, so decided to join the protests dressed as Pikachu.
Naturally, there were plenty of videos of Taskan at the protest.
🇹🇷 #BREAKING | Pikachu was spotted fleeing from the police during anti-Erdoğan protests in Turkey. pic.twitter.com/NhTgV7FqHe
— Universal News (@universalnewsx) March 27, 2025
But although the videos are real, the photo, which is arguably a better illustration, is not. This is what makes artificial intelligence such a malign technology; it can take an amazing moment that really happened, and then spoil it by adding something fake — undermining trust in media.
That large Instagram accounts such as History Reported and Hidden NY, which also posted the image, can share false information to millions of social media users and not get called out for it is a depressing state of affairs.
It really is worth fact-checking images; Googling often brings up the real story behind it. It’s something the Governor of Texas Greg Abbott should have done before sharing an AI image of a U.S. pilot being rescued in Iran.
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