How artificial intelligence is eroding trust in reality
Sarah Bailey
My friend Lucy took a photo recently. Lucy was riding and had just finished her ride when she noticed a nearby kangaroo standing next to a fox and a bird flying deftly in the sky above them. In the shot, the flowers create a vibrant mauve haze and the surrounding grass is a lush green. It’s objectively a great photo, and he did what most of us do these days when we take a nice photo: He posted it online.
Within minutes, comments started coming in.
artificial intelligenceone person wrote.
not realanother agreed.
This bird looks fake.
Lucy and I texted later and agreed it was sad that so many people dismissed the photo as fake.
A few days later, my father sent me a reel on Instagram. It was an old video of George W. Bush talking about America’s immigration policy. I hope it’s not artificial intelligencemy father wrote. ‘Cause it’s about what I said the other day. While I was watching the video, my oldest son entered the kitchen talking on the phone with his friend. I could only hear one side of the conversation. Ha, no, I saw that too, man. Absolutely fake.
Humans have never been satisfied with the real world and have tinkered with it tirelessly, often taking its bones and improving upon them.
SARAH BAILEY
“Probably AI” is a common catchphrase in our house these days and is said without any emotion. From my teenage children’s perspective, even if they see it with their own eyes, it’s not necessarily real. Keep playing. And I wonder, does this widespread skepticism matter?
My last novel clickexplores how artificial intelligence is used by criminals and the challenges this presents to police. From fraud to deepfakes to terrorism, I explore what happens when things aren’t what they seem. This is the darkest book I’ve ever written, because there’s nothing scarier than the things we can’t trust.
Fortunately, click is a work of fiction born from my imagination and all the different strands of information I have accumulated over the years. It’s not “real” either. So why am I so disturbed by the avalanche of frauds uncovered by artificial intelligence? It’s not as if reality hasn’t been distorted in the past. Humans have never been satisfied with the real world and have tinkered with it tirelessly, often taking its bones and improving upon them. Remember filters? It would be unnecessary to go to the trouble of posting a photo with the hashtag #nofilter these days; We have bigger things to worry about.
More than 10 million people liked the fake wedding photo of famous couple Zendaya and Tom Holland. I guess it doesn’t matter, especially since they’re married. But there are also AI-generated photos from war zones, based on real atrocities, mind you, but still. It feels wrong. And God (and Elon) knows what’s being created on sites like Grok.
That’s the problem. It may not be a big deal for a group of people to argue about whether a nature photograph is real; But if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that the tide is slippery, especially when Big Tech sees cash at the bottom.
I regularly observe my toddler deftly navigating between what is real and what is not. He watches cartoons and 3D images, is obsessed with Spider-Man, and sees his older brothers yelling at the screens as they fight zombies and build complex worlds from pixels. I know intuitively that there is a difference between these things and reality, and so I see it as a good litmus test. He loves Bluey, but he knows she’s not real. But when I told him that the AI-generated video of a baby mouse curled up sleeping with a kitten wasn’t real, he looked at me like I was crazy.
Maybe that’s why this new wave of fraud feels different. This is a fraud, a trick. It crosses an important line that helps us make decisions, form opinions, and navigate the world safely. And it leaves us in a confusing catch-22. We learned very quickly to be cautious, to look for tricks, which leads us to assume everything is AI. We say “fake”. “This is nonsense.” We would rather be mistaken about something being true than feel stupid for being deceived.
It’s not like reading a novel or going to a magic show where we willingly suspend our disbelief and step into an alternate reality. Artificial intelligence is a contract we haven’t signed yet, but it’s still coming at us from every angle. Leaving aside for a moment where this all comes down to, I worry about what this collective lack of trust will do to our empathy and ability to form a coherent view. What happens to our humanity if we cannot trust what we see with our own eyes?
I’m not sure what the answer is. AI tags? More regulation? Code of conduct for registered media organisations? Has media literacy increased? How do we put my fast-talking tech bro back in the bottle?
For me, it will be about small actions that challenge the AI: being in nature, spending time with animals, meeting a friend, going to a party, reading a book. Artificial intelligence may be blurring the real thing on the internet, but the real world isn’t going anywhere. It’s up to us to investigate this.
click The song by Sarah Bailey (Allen & Unwin) is out March 31st.
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