AI-generated Iran images are widespread. How do we know what to believe? | Margaret Sullivan

The videos look authentic – and they are spreading like wildfire on social media. One, for example, shows Iranian missiles exploding upon the airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. Another shows US soldiers being held at gunpoint by Iranian military.

They aren’t real but – often made with the help of cutting-edge AI – they are wildly misleading. They may get debunked, but somehow that doesn’t make a dent.

“New fakes are popping up faster than they can be swatted down,” as CNN’s fact-checking reporter Daniel Dale put it, detailing the fakes mentioned above – just two among so many.

Meanwhile, legitimate photographs and images, even from reliable sources of news, can get branded as false or suspicious. In some cases, that’s a way to instill doubt and cause people to take the grim reality of war less seriously and to think of death and destruction as just one more video game.

The New York Times found itself forced to speak up this week after an organization charged online that a news image – depicting a large crowd of people in Tehran – showed “signs of digital manipulation” that suggested “copy-paste duplication”.

Not so, said a Times statement posted online.

“This is a genuine image, taken by a journalist in Iran on Monday, March 9, 2026,” it began, saying that the analysis put out by the Empirical Research and Forecasting Institute is “fundamentally flawed” and that it is “dishonestly based on a re-posted version of the originally published image”.

It went on to state a larger case, that the Times “does not use A.I. to generate or manipulate images to represent real events; we rely on the work of human beings to bear witness, gather the facts, and help readers better understand the world”.

Those who had raised the questions replied by saying that they weren’t claiming fabrication, but merely making the point that authoritarian regimes have incentives to manipulate images and that news outlets must rigorously verify.

Legitimate news organizations do just that, and sometimes are criticized for taking too long to come to conclusions as they do their verifications.

What are responsible news consumers (also known as citizens) to do, especially when they are hungry to understand what’s happening in a high-stakes war?

It all comes down to exercising critical thinking and slowing down, said David Clinch, a media consultant who was a founding partner in Storyful, a pioneer in forensic verification.

In an interview, he offered me three ideas to keep in mind.

First: “Don’t trust anyone online, including yourself.” We all come with preconceived ideas, he notes, and sharing something we want to be true, without checking, can be dangerous and add to the problem.

Second, find and trust true experts. There are people at news organizations whose jobs and expertise revolve around determining what’s real and what isn’t. He gives as one example the BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh, who posts social-media threads pointing out fabrications, and explaining the process of figuring that out.

Just days ago, Sardarizadeh debunked a video – which had been viewed more than a million times – that appeared to show a strike targeting a tower in Tel Aviv. He was blunt: “The clip is AI-generated. The blast looks fake, and no such incident has been documented in Tel Aviv.”

Clinch adds, however, that it’s important not to rely on pseudo-experts; he mentions Grok – the AI chatbot on X. In other words, not all supposed experts or fact-checkers are created equal.

Third, resist the temptation to take “a slice of truth” as representing a larger whole or total reality. Even if an image or video is verified and accurate, it probably doesn’t tell the whole story or the only story. Look for context; read about what’s happening. And again, curb your impulses; slow down before sharing.

I asked Clinch if it is reasonable for normal people to be responsible for doing this kind of digging.

He replied that it’s now an unfortunate fact of life for those who want to be well-informed and not become part of the ugly cycle of online misinformation and disinformation.

“For responsible citizens, these things are both unfair and necessary,” Clinch said.

Critical thinking, amid all the fakery and false charges, has become increasingly important. And the chaos of war raises the stakes even higher.

So, trust nothing at first blush, find credible experts and always consider the larger context.

And maybe most of all, when it comes to sharing images online, either slow down or become part of the problem.

• Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture