When seeing is no longer believing: perils and possibilities in a world of synthetic media

Media and political discourse have been replete with warnings about how generative AI could worsen the misinformation problem and people’s trust in information. A common argument is that people will stop trusting anything they see and hear because state-of-the-art AI systems can be used to create content that is so realistic that it destroys any hope of a shared reality. The public clearly shares this concern, with a majority of people in various countries worrying about their ability to tell what is real from what is fake, and many saying that they find it more difficult to know what they can trust, according to recent surveys.
At the same time, we seem to be dealing with a paradox: despite the widespread availability and accessibility of such AI and the growing amount of synthetic content online, trust in various institutions and media, including the news, hasn’t fallen off a cliff. While many people report that they have become more sceptical of the information they encounter, people still trust some things. And while the realism of media might no longer act as the best heuristic for assessing whether something is true, it still is a yardstick by which people assess news reports but also information they receive from friends, family, or experts and institutions. In other words, realism is one part of the equation when it comes to making sense of information but it is not the be-all and end-all, as pre-existing biases, the source, and other factors all play a role in where people place their trust.
This panel will investigate this conundrum and ask what has and hasn’t changed with the arrival of AI capable of creating highly realistic synthetic media. Is realism really dead, and do we need to distrust everything we see and hear? How are people and institutions coping? What new norms and behaviours, if any, do we need to navigate this more complex world? Who is (or should be) responsible for upholding our epistemic infrastructures? And what chances does this new situation present to those in the business of providing factual and trustworthy information?
Moderated by Felix Simon.