SHOCKING: Real photos look fake - You Need To See This

The ambiguity between real and fake online content is much more dangerous than it might first seem. Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia highlight that misinformation (when you accidentally share something false) and disinformation (when you do so intentionally), in any medium, can erode trust in civic institutions. Fake photos, together with videos, are often among the most potent forms.

While one part of the solution is increased use of content-verification tools—especially by gatekeepers such as journalists—the researchers say that an equally important component is our collective media literacy. Ultimately, the best line of defense, and the only one you can control, is you.

For those of us who don't want to be duped by visual mis- and disinformation, the simplest way to check whether a photo is legitimate is to use a reverse image search, such as Google Lens. These tools are often free and can help identify earlier, potentially more authentic copies of images online.

That said, this technology is not foolproof because it:

1. relies on unedited copies of the media already being online;
2. doesn’t search the entire internet;
3. doesn’t always allow filtering by publication date;
4. returns only exact matches or near-matches, so it’s not always thorough. For instance, editing an image and then flipping its orientation can fool Google into thinking it’s an entirely different image.

Computer vision and machine learning offer relatively advanced detection capabilities for images and videos, but many require technical expertise to understand and operate.

So do manual forensic detection methods, which focus on edits visible to the naked eye, but they also require expertise and can be time-consuming.

Still, you can access work in this field by visiting sites such as Snopes.com.

The good news, however, is that before turning to any tools, we can ask ourselves a few simple questions to determine whether a photo or video circulating online is fake. Think:

1. Was it originally made for social media?
2. How widely and for how long was it circulated?
3. What responses did it receive?
4. Who was the intended audience?

Quite often, the logical conclusions we draw from the answers will be enough to weed out inauthentic visuals. For a full list of useful questions, check out this list put together by experts at Manchester Metropolitan University.

However, given the current trajectory of AI-generated content becoming increasingly prevalent online, the distinction between real and fake is likely to become even harder to navigate. Meta, which runs the social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is not only allowing people to post AI-generated content; it has also launched products to enable more of it to be made.

Image and video generators, along with increasingly powerful filters, are now being offered across the board.

"Soon we'll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI," the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January's earnings call.

YouTube's CEO, Neal Mohan, wrote in his blog that in December 2025 alone, more than one million YouTube channels used the platform's AI tools to make content.

"Just as the synthesizer, Photoshop and CGI revolutionized sound and visuals, AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in," he said.

While there may be legitimate and beneficial uses for these technologies, these developments are especially concerning because many people rely on social media as their only source of news.