Posts from users on social media platforms since April 8, 2025, shared a video showing footballer Cristiano Ronaldo allegedly reciting Surah Ikhlas during an interview. However, the clip is AI-generated.
Video of Cristiano Ronaldo reciting Surah Ikhlas
The iVerify Pakistan team investigated this content and determined that it is false.
To reach this conclusion, iVerify Pakistan analysed facial movements and conducted a tool analysis on the video.
Posts from users on social media platforms since April 8, 2025, shared a video showing footballer Cristiano Ronaldo allegedly reciting Surah Ikhlas during an interview. However, the clip is AI-generated.
On April 8, a YouTube channel dedicated to Ronaldo posted a 20-second clip allegedly showing the footballer reciting Surah Ikhlas, one of the chapters in the Holy Quran.
The video was titled: “Cristiano Ronaldo recites Surah Ikhlas in public! shocking and emotional moment”.
The video was viewed 12 million times.
It was also shared here, here, here and here, racking up views in tens of thousands respectively.
The same video was also shared on Facebook and TikTok.
A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its high virality and keen public interest in the celebrity footballer.
Analysing the video using multiple tools to detect evidence of tampering or artificial intelligence manipulation revealed that Attestiv.ai assigned the video an 85 per cent suspicion rating, indicating a strong likelihood of tampering. In contrast, Hive Moderation and Deepware did not detect any signs of manipulation.
A visual analysis of the video revealed inconsistencies, such as rigid facial movements, uneven blinking and unnatural mouth movements, strongly suggesting that the video was generated using AI.
Additionally, a keyword search for “Cristiano Ronaldo reciting Surah Ikhlas” to corroborate the viral clip did not yield any news reports or stories that would otherwise be expected to cover such a development that would be of interest to the Muslim and sports communities.
Instead, it yielded several AI-generated or dubbed videos on YouTube, featuring him reciting various chapters from the Holy Quran, including Surah Ikhlas.
The claim that a video shows Cristiano Ronaldo reciting Surah Ikhlas is false.
The video is a deepfake.
