Masa Alimardani

People using even fake forensics analysis to then call content AI as well.

And some of the fake forensics analysis was AI generated itself to lob those accusations as well.

It is this situation where the trust signals are really failing.

We've had tech companies create a lot of these capabilities without fully assessing what kind of guardrails there needs to be in order not to have this kind of epistemic fracture of not knowing what to see and believe.

And so it is this situation where you really do need the tech companies and the powers to be to step up.

and invest more in creating all of these different trust signals that we need.

I mean, that's something that my team at Witness has been working on for a very long time in terms of what kind of labeling and what kind of, you know, providence and authenticity standards need to be embedded within these technologies, within the models that are being developed.

and how the platforms need to be able to communicate this transparency, and the kinds of investments they need to be doing in terms of having human reviewers and fact checkers.

Because of course, if you've been following the trust and safety teams, the investments and fact checking across these platforms has been decimated over the past few years, making our information ecosystem especially vulnerable as this technology is accelerating at the same time.

Whoever really has the most resources and the most appeal, we really are seeing the situation where both sides have ways to appeal to certain sectors and populations.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has long tried to present itself with this identity of representing the oppressed, representing the global majority.

Of course, the irony being they are

the biggest repressors of their own people.

But this is the kind of identity that their propaganda likes to present to the world.

And they've never had more raw material with the fact that they are under bombardment by the US and Israel, who have been kind of these longtime boogeyman figures within their ideological and propaganda frameworks for, you know, over four decades.

So they are really playing to this advantage.

So it is this

very toxic information environment you have where

things like this are very quick to spread.

And especially, you know, I work on this professionally, but also personally, I myself am, you know, Iranian in the diaspora, and I see how this spread of AI generated content, and even the doubt of AI generated content has created this just sense of uncertainty.