The proliferation of synthetic videos could—at least for some media audiences—be an incentive for more conscious information consumption. Understanding that artificial intelligence can realistically visualize virtually any story can “rationalize” perception, gradually reducing the emotional element. However, other scenarios cannot be ruled out, in which awareness of the inherent implausibility of content will not be a barrier to its consumption, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Anton Bespalov.
On September 11, 2001, millions of people around the world witnessed an unprecedented event in real time: the destruction of New York’s Twin Towers, one of the most potent symbols of American power, in a terrorist attack remarkable for its audacity and brutality. The tragedy not only reshaped global politics and homeland security but also reaffirmed the central role of visual media in shaping public perception. At the time, television—the dominant and most advanced medium—delivered the images that served as the audience’s primary benchmark of truth. “I saw it with my own eyes” carried the weight of irrefutable fact. Victor Pelevin’s seminal novel Babylon
had already been written by then, yet its dark satire on television and manufactured reality was still perceived as psychedelic exaggeration. Today, it reads as a prescient vision of the future.
A quarter of a century later, visual content remains dominant, but both its sources and its relationship to truth have changed profoundly. First, content creation ceased to be the exclusive domain of professionals. The proliferation of mobile devices in the first two decades of the 21st century triggered an explosion of user-generated material. Coupled with increasingly affordable broadband and mobile internet, video-sharing platforms turned the web into the primary distribution channel. Meanwhile, online personalities and influencers emerged as major news sources in their own right. According to the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, the proportion of users accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States (54%) overtook both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time.
The third decade of the century has been defined by artificial intelligence and its unprecedented ability to generate hyper-realistic yet entirely synthetic images and videos. As one large language model asked to discuss this article observes, generative AI “not only blurs the line between the real and the constructed, but renders that line virtually imperceptible to human judgment.” Even allowing for the AI’s characteristic overconfidence, the warning is well-founded.
Users—who now function as both viewers and readers—have more reason than ever to doubt what they see. Traditional manipulation techniques such as montage and selective editing are being eclipsed by increasingly sophisticated deepfakes. Those audiences skilled in fact-checking either begin to seek confirmation/refutation of what they see, or adopt a hypercritical stance: any video content, especially if it goes viral, begins to be perceived as potentially fake.
At the same time, many others continue to consume even blatantly inauthentic content uncritically. As Yury Kolotaev has noted in his article
on AI-generated spam, “truth is now defined not as what corresponds to reality, but as what is emotionally appealing.” However, confirmation of pre-existing beliefs has always mattered more to most people than objective truth. Consciously or not, users increasingly curate their own digital bubbles, in which visual reinforcement of what they “already know” is welcomed regardless of authenticity. Another significant shift is the rise of short-form video as the dominant format for information consumption, especially among younger audiences. Recent studies have documented its negative effects on attention span and cognitive processing—creating fertile ground for manipulation.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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