On July 3, Portuguese and Liverpool football star Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva tragically died in an accident (BBC Report). Later, on July 5, the funeral of Jota and his brother André was held in Gondomar, Portugal (BBC Report). In this context, a collage of four images recently circulated on social media claiming, “Cristiano Ronaldo, Jota’s closest person, is giving him a final farewell with flowers.”

See posts on Facebook spreading such a claim here (Archive), here (Archive), and here (Archive).

Fact Check

Rumor Scanner Team’s investigation revealed that the images showing Ronaldo placing flowers at Jota’s grave are not real. Instead, the widely circulated claim uses artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images. In reality, Cristiano Ronaldo was not present at Diogo Jota’s funeral.

During the investigation, no credible news source or reliable evidence was found to support the existence of these images. However, one of the likely original sources of the circulated image appeared to be from a Facebook account named “Yalico Manuel”, shared on July 5 (Archived Post). Notably, a watermark with the name “Yalico Manuel” can also be seen in the viral images.

Additionally, a watermark of Meta AI, Meta’s artificial intelligence technology (Meta AI), is visible in the image. This confirms that the circulated image was created using Meta’s AI tools.

Moreover, the investigation found that Cristiano Ronaldo was absent from Diogo Jota’s funeral ceremony. Therefore, the claim that Ronaldo was present at Jota’s grave on the day of the funeral is not logical.

To further verify the authenticity of the four images in the collage, they were tested using Cantilux, an AI-content detection platform. The analysis showed that the images had a 74%–92% likelihood of being AI-generated.

Conclusion

A collage of four AI-generated images was falsely circulated on social media, claiming to show Cristiano Ronaldo placing flowers at Diogo Jota’s grave during the funeral. This claim is false.