Do you know what's real and what's not when you're scrolling through your news feeds? When you're scrolling through your social media? AI generated “news” pages and political deepfake ads are swamping social media feeds. They've been around for a while, but there's more and more and more of them and they're becoming harder to detect as the technology gets more sophisticated, as people understand how to use the tools they're discovering. 

When it comes to the ads, think of Mike Hosking's cryptocurrency investment scheme scam and Toni Street's weight loss drugs scam – all AI generated, all false. But if it looks like them, it sounds like them, how do you know it's not them? It's the same as true with news stories. How do you differentiate between what is real news and what is fake news? And it's getting even harder now that some news is becoming fakeish. 

The Herald reports this morning in their story that many posts are on pages with more than 100,000 followers, so you'd think, well, that would be legit. The phonies take existing stories, news stories that begin as real, then run them through AI to rewrite them and then republish them with fake images, again in many cases using the original image and then oomphing it up. The Herald used an example of the attack on Christopher Luxon's electorate office. They showed the real photo, which was of a pretty much undamaged facade of the building with two police officers standing outside. Next to it, somebody had vamped up the image by showing it completely gutted with fire appliances and many fire officers standing around with the two original police officers. So you take the original, then oomph it up. 

Particularly spurious is the spate of fake social media articles that have been targeting New Zealand athletes and their families. Recent posts have featured former and current All Blacks, and Warriors coach Andrew Webster and his family were targeted with a post claiming his wife had died when in reality she is very much alive. Why would anyone be so stupid and so cruel? TVNZ spoke to Massey University marketing professor Bodo Lang, and he said the people posting these fake articles were likely seeking clicks and followers. They're people who make their living out of posts on social media. There are many of them who do that. Some are just eking out some kind of existence – they would far rather be an influencer, or run a YouTube channel, or run a page and make their money that way. That's what they think. It's actually a hell of a lot of hard work from what I understand from people who do in fact make a sizeable income out of their social media. It's a lot of effort and I don't think these people understand nearly how much it is. 

And as many of the young influencers, the young YouTubers who start off life with followers because they're doing something they love doing, when they monetize it and have to put the work in, they end up crashed on the shores of their own fame, shipwrecked. They give it up by the time they're 22/23 if they don't come to a worse end. But initially, these young people think, well, this has got to be better than a real job. They'll take anything they can and use it to get the clicks in an attempt to monetize it. 

So how do you spot the difference between what's real and what is not? In the story this morning in the Herald, there's a photo or an image that the Herald's used showing me in the big studio where Mike normally broadcasts and where we tend to film the interviews with leaders of political parties. It's got me in the big studio with Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins. Now, there's a number of things immediately wrong with that AI image. If I was moderating a debate, no matter what you think about my Tokyo Rose tendencies and my snuggling up to the National Party, I would not be sitting so close to the PM. A moderator always sits smack bang in the middle. And even though I'm looking at him with a kind of outraged expression as he lunges across the table pointing his finger at AI Chris Hipkins, I would not be sitting that close to him. 

Chris Hipkins looks like Clutch Cargo – he's got this big manly jaw. Looks nothing, well, I mean, I'm sure he's got a very nice jaw, but it looks nothing like him really. Christopher Luxon's about right, although he looks to be towering over the rest of us when in real life, he wouldn't be. At first glance, if you were looking at that, you'd think, oh yes, when was the leaders' debate on? I must have missed it. If you weren't looking at it closely. 

My mum got taken in when Pope Leo was anointed Pope. Did you see that lovely video about him with the alcoholic friend that he found in the Vatican City? Had him come and stay with him the first week. She showed me, and that wasn't even using particularly sophisticated AI, this was just a series of images of random people and the Pope. I'm like, Mum, no. No, that's simply not true. He did not take in his alcoholic friend from America and put him up in the papal chambers and get him sorted and reunite him with his family within the first week of his papacy. Well, how would you know? She said. Well, have a look at the papal calendar. And she's not a stupid woman; she just wants to believe nice stories. 

So how do you know what is real and what is not? Have you been caught out before? I mean, if it's there for entertainment, if you know it's there for entertainment, you can enjoy it and jog on. But it does get damaging, it does get harmful when you believe that Mike Hosking is offering cryptocurrency investment advice. People have been taken in by politicians who are deepfakes, media personalities who are deepfakes. When you lose your money, when you are the victim of it, when you wake up one morning to find out that you're supposed to be dead, I mean, disconcerting to say the very, very least, and then having to tell people, no, I'm very much alive. And as we head into an election, how do you know what is real and what is not? When you look at all the information you're consuming across all the different media, how do you know what's true?