Whether on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok: There is more and more AI content and deepfakes circulating online – also because many users share them without knowing. But despite the rapid progress in the AI field and increasing manipulative content, there are some adjustments to detect AI content. There just needs to be a rethink. A commentary analysis.
Recognize AI videos
- More and more AI-generated videos are flooding the internet. This applies not only to digital media, but especially to portals such as YouTube, from where such clips are distributed. The problem: Instead of handmade entertainment, nerdy content or high-quality documentaries, more and more AI junk ends up Fake videos on the net. Or in short: content that only aims to get clicks or spread manipulative content.
- The lot greater danger is based on so-called deepfakes. These are audio and video recordings that were created using artificial intelligence. For example, faces and people can be swapped or inserted into other recordings. Above all Logic or image errors However, they can (still) indicate deepfakes. These include: blurred areas, strange proportions or an inappropriate context.
- Due to rapid advances in the AI industry, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize images and videos generated using artificial intelligence. AI tools like Sora or Seedance are now able to generate fake videos that are… can hardly be distinguished from real content. But there are now websites that can help detect manipulated recordings. Platforms like DeepFake-o-meter or UNITE, for example, analyze uploaded videos and can expose fake or misleading recordings.
A rethink must take place
Between cat clips and chancellor speeches The boundaries between fact and fiction are currently blurring online – more than ever. The democratization of image production was once still a promise. Now she is a risk. Because if almost anyone can create deceptively real images and videos with just a few clicks, the burden of proof shifts.
It is no longer the counterfeiter who has to convince, but rather the doubter who has to refute. However, AI is then no longer a tool, but rather a power factor. In the hands of populists it is a additional megaphone to already misleading content. In the hands of fraudsters, she is a chameleon.
What is worrying is not so much the existence of manipulated AI content, but rather its existence normalization. When even professional editorial teams stumble, it reveals a structural problem. Unfortunately, speed often beats care and emotionality beats classification.
Specifically, this means that anyone who publishes content these days is competing with algorithms and adopting their speed and that of other users or media. Out of Click lust Both journalism and digital society are losing their compass. The antidotes for recognizing AI videos are neither new nor secret.
It simply has to be Rethinking takes place. Or in short: check sources, look for context, check images for logic breaks and use checking tools. However, skepticism is not and should not be seen as grumpiness, but rather as digital hygiene. Because: trust is good. But a cross-check will be much better by 2026 at the latest.
Voices
- Andreas Dengel, Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)in an interview with SWR Aktuell: “In recent years, the tools have improved so much that you can hardly tell the difference anymore. With videos, you are more likely to discover anomalies: for example, unclean transitions or incorrect lettering. If a store name is misspelled in the background or the text doesn’t make sense, that is often a clue. In the digital space, AI is very dangerous because it is used specifically for manipulation. Images and videos are distributed millions of times in order to manipulate people.”
- Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) to Deutschlandfunk: “In addition to the unspeakable topic of these deepfakes, we will have to deal massively with topics when an AI develops apparent information. Where are the facts? Is it based on sources? Or is it simply artificially generated? If we have images that never existed in reality, but suggest something like that, then what is actually true or not true? Of course, we have always modified things, images, films, artificially animated. But the difference is, they always had a core of truth.”
- AI expert Rafael Bujotzek has some tips ready in an interview with SWR3 that may seem banal at first, but unfortunately are rarely taken to heart: “Always check whether content is real before you share it with others! Otherwise you yourself will become an accelerant for such weapons. I have to get out of this reclined, watering position and lean forward, really look at the picture or video. You can’t recognize it quickly. And especially not on a small cell phone screen. The most important tool for AI videos: your head.”
Detecting AI videos: Labeling requirements and transparency rules
Current technological developments promise solutions to recognize AI images and videos However, it does not defuse the problem, but rather exacerbates it. Because the more perfect AI content is generated, the more the fight shifts from the surface to the depths.
And away from pixel errors and towards content manipulation. In the future, it will be less important whether a video is artificial, but rather whether it is intended to deliberately deceive. Both the digital media, AI providers and politicians therefore have a duty.
Means: It needs Labeling requirements and transparency rules. The European AI Act already provides for this, but it must not degenerate into a bureaucratic fig leaf. If regulation is to have an impact, it must be enforced, monitored and, if necessary, sanctioned.
Ultimately, however, it is user behavior that is crucial. That means: “First think, then click“ should and must be the motto that is both simple and effective, but rarely implemented. Because the greatest danger is not AI-generated content, but real outrage based on fakes.
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