Image of Iranian World Cup footballer with school backpack is AI-generated

The Iranian men's national football team brought children's backpacks onto the pitch before a March 2026 friendly as a tribute to the victims of a strike that hit a school at the start of the Middle East war, but an image purporting to show a player recreating the moment during the side's World Cup match against New Zealand is inauthentic. It depicts a fictional athlete in a nonexistent kit, and OpenAI's image verification tool assessed it was generated with the company's artificial intelligence