With the rapid progress in AI generation in recent years and the already vast field of competent amateur VFX artists having been around for over a decade, we have to change how we approach information.

I know it’s probably still a little bit of a sore spot to bring these guys up, but take this video from the Corridor folks as an example. In the video, they examine a couple videos of people being chased by bears. This is a completely believable scenario, it’s happened countless times that are documented very well. There’s no inclination, based solely on the subject matter of the video, to suspect that they are fakes. Sure, it’s rare someone gets something like that on video, but it’s nowhere near the realm of what would be considered impossible or even improbable. But nonetheless, the videos are hoaxes.

My point in this being that, in the modern age, the subject matter of information and it’s ‘likelihood’ of being authentic no longer have much – if any – value in determining or deciding it’s worth an attempt to determine a video’s authenticity.

We can no longer safely look at a video or image and determine its authenticity strictly based on believability. We can only examine the literal physical information itself, and look for objective, verifiable signs of inauthenticity.

There’s going to be a lot of amateur armchair forensics, as well as very much more legitimate analyses, and there’s gonna be wild and ridiculous speculation, and there might even be active malicious disinformation attempts thrown in, and we’re going to have to adapt and put up with all of it without going all Lord of the Flies on each other because otherwise, there’s no point in looking into anything.

If we only accept subjectively believable information in an age where extant and even older technology can be used to fabricate subjectively believable information, we will never ever find anything close to objectively believable evidence of unbelievable events.

Adapt. React. Readapt. Apt.