Fooled by fake videos? Unsure what to trust? Here's how to to tell what's real.

There’s a term for artificially generated content that permeates online spaces — creators call it AI slop, and when generative AI first emerged back in late 2022, that was true. AI photos and videos used to be painfully, obviously fake. The lighting was off, the physics were unrealistic, people had too many fingers or limbs or odd body proportions, and textures appeared fuzzy or glossy, even in places where it didn’t make sense. They just didn’t look real .

Many of you probably remember the nightmare fuel that was the early video of Will Smith eating spaghetti. It’s terrifying.

This isn’t the case any more. In just two short years, AI videos have become convincingly realistic to the point that deepfakes — content that perfectly mimics real people, places, and events — are now running