Morphed Image of Aphrodite's Rock in Cyprus Goes Viral on Facebook

An image of a rock is being widely shared on Facebook with many users appreciating "nature's art."

An altered photo of Aphrodite's Rock in Cyprus was shared to falsely claim that it showed 'nature's art.'

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

An image of a rock – which appears like a woman – is being widely shared on Facebook with many users appreciating "nature's art." However, we found that it's a morphed picture and the original one shows Aphrodite's Rock in Cyprus.

CLAIM

Facebook user 'Anupriya Dessusha' shared the image on Facebook with the caption: "#picchallenge #natureart, so beautiful.(sic)"

The image shared by the user had garnered over one lakh shares at the time of writing the article.

You can view the archived version here.

(Source: Facebook/ Screenshot)

Several Facebook users shared the image lauding "nature's art" and the archived version of the posts can be viewed here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We conducted a Google reverse image search on the viral image and came across an image uploaded on Pixabay in August 2018. The title of the image mentioned the location as Aphrodite's Rock in Cyprus which is also known as Petra tou Romiou.

The image uploaded on Pixabay described the location as Cyprus.

(Source: Pixabay/ Screenshot)

On comparing the viral image with the one uploaded on Pixabay, we found several similarities and differences that suggested that the former is a morphed version.

While the positioning of people and trees is similar in both, the face-like structure cannot be seen in the Pixabay image.

Left: Viral image. Right: Image on Pixabay.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Next, we came across the street view of the said location in Cyprus available on Google Earth, and even in this view, one cannot see the same structure as in the viral image.

Street view of Aphrodite's Rock available on Google Earth.

(Source: Google Earth/ Screenshot)

Image of Aphrodite's Rock, Cyprus.

Image of Aphrodite's Rock, Cyprus.

Also, we searched for the photos of Aphrodite's Rock on Alamy and Getty images and they can be viewed here and here. (Note: Swipe right to see the images.)

Evidently, an altered photo of Aphrodite's Rock in Cyprus was shared to falsely claim that it showed 'nature's art.'

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