Mitch McConnell's hospital jeans were real. But the image of a crying Nekima Levy Armstrong, an ICE protestor held up as a symbol of "far-left agitators" by the Trump administration, was faked.
President Trump's recent outing with Mike Tyson was legitimate. The viral photo of an adulterous Georgia city mayor was not.
In the grand scheme of things, it has never been easy to detect AI-generated content. But it used to have its tells: a few extra fingers, or a strange texture, or an uncanny gaze.
Now, "those tells are mostly gone, and whatever replaces them will be gone in a year too," said Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at online security company NordVPN. "Any guide built on visual artifacts has a short shelf life."
The risk of spreading misinformation is not the only reason for questioning what you see and hear online. Digital scams, including deepfakes, led to losses of over $148 billion in 2025, an increase of more than 25 percent from the year before.
So if the visual Turing Test isn't the failsafe against fraud, scams, and manipulation we once thought it was, what do we do? We focus on the human things we can vet: Our emotions, our brains, and the digital tools available to us.
Deepfake or real? Check the source, not the content.
Instead of trying to spot AI mistakes, users are now encouraged by cybersecurity experts to verify sources rather than content.
When it comes to video, don't hunt for glitches, which are being patched out of generative models fast, explains Roei Sherman, senior director of research at cloud security firm Mitiga. "Every detection tip we publish eventually becomes a line in someone's prompt."
Instead, try to find the larger context from which it originates. If you see a clip of a political candidate making rounds, look for the full speech or interview. Find broader news coverage of the event, from multiple outlets.
"Short clips cut out of context are where most of the manipulation lives," Sherman said.
Sourcing images may be trickier without robust authentication systems in place. While a reverse image search on Google can still prove helpful, the search engine's new AI features may churn out their own misinformation or reaffirm the original hoax, explained Sofia Rubinson, senior editor at misinformation watchdog NewsGuard.
"Fact-checkers used to depend on traditional search platforms like Google to help research the origins of photos and videos," she told Mashable, "but at NewsGuard we’ve found that the AI-powered Google Search often misattributes imagery as depicting what misinformers claim."
And now there's a chance that the source you trace an image or video to looks completely legit, even if it's not.
When evaluating the source itself, Briedis recommends asking questions such as:
Has this account existed for more than a month?
Does this information appear anywhere else, from anyone with a familiar, credible name attached?
Is this person asking me to act right now, and, if so, why?
"None of that requires you to analyze a pixel or a waveform," he explained. "That is exactly why it still works."
Is it an AI hoax? Think logically.
Go with your gut, experts told Mashable.
Always consider plausibility. How likely is it that this could happen? If it's an account that appears to be owned by a public figure, would this person likely say such a thing on a public platform?
Rubinson emphasizes the importance of seeing multiple angles of an event or crisis before deciding it's legitimate. "Keep an eye out for corroborating information," she urges.
And the logic test doesn't just apply to fantastically novel events, like those bunnies hopping on a trampoline. A lot of social media is fake, said Rubinson, and incendiary comments from politicians or controversial actions from celebrities deserve to be double-checked — even if a lot of them turn out to be true.
Am I being ragebaited? Monitor your reaction.
It's also essential that you remain aware of how the image or video makes you feel, Sherman says.
If you have a visceral response to a post — maybe it enrages you or stirs a sense of desperation to engage — it may be doing that on purpose.
"If you see one wild video appearing repeatedly in your feed that seems designed to evoke an emotional response, there’s reason to be suspicious," Rubinson said.
Can I use detection tools? Yes, but with caution.
So you've taken a good look at the post itself, checked its sources, and still aren't sure? Turn to the professionals.
Keep up with organizations tracking viral deepfakes. Newsguard, for example, publishes an AI monitor and a newsletter on trending deepfakes and misinformation. Cybersecurity company McAfee flags popular AI-powered scams on its AI news blog. Deepfake detector company AI or Not maintains a searchable database of known deepfakes and manipulated images.
As federal oversight lags, state-level regulation and industry-wide content provenance measures are also aiding the battle against deepfakes. And cybersecurity experts are building increasingly robust countermeasures to combat deepfakes, including advancements to AI deepfake detectors.
But no detection tool is reliable enough to issue a definitive verdict on whether or not something is AI. If you're still not certain an image is real, don't share it, experts urged.
"What [detection tools] are good for is the moment something feels off," Briedis said. "The tool agrees with you, and now you go and verify it properly."
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