People lost their minds last year over a photo of the Pope in a white puffy jacket.

Anyone who has spent any time playing with AI image generators could easily spot that the image was fake. There are telltale signs (at least there were in 2023).

For many others, they saw a photo of the Pope dressed like a red-carpet celebrity at fashion week.

Going forward, news is going to be trickier to navigate than ever before. The issue will be the amount of AI-produced images, videos and audio recordings used by dodgy players to skew favour for or against a particular narrative.

But artificial intelligence isn’t the problem. The problem is us.

Most people believe, without questioning, whatever they see and hear. Others, claiming free thought, discredit the mainstream media in favour of independent sources such as podcasts. But even these people often put blind trust in what they’re told by those “who are just telling it like it is.”

Humans too easily come to immediate conclusions. And this makes us far more susceptible to the era of deep-fakes that will soon arise from AI.

If we can suddenly believe that the Pope has become a fashionista because of a single photo on the internet, how will we know whether videos of world leaders are real or fake?

Imagine a video of an unhinged dictator announcing a nuclear assault on a foreign power. And imagine the resulting panic-induced chaos in the streets.

Now, more than ever, we need to be vigilant.

Question everything. If something seems outside the realm of likelihood, dig deeper.

Because if you think the daily news is weird now — just wait.