By Thomas Germain
Publication Date: 2026-03-25 10:00:00
In Netanyahu’s case, it didn’t help that his team used a fancy camera and filmed with a shallow depth of field, meaning a nice sharp foreground and a soft, blurry background – which is exactly what AI videos typically look like, Carrasco says. But by the time Netanyahu released his coffee shop clip, our world was already saturated with fake content, raising suspicions that cannot be overcome under any circumstances. Netanyahu’s fingers, whether hallucinated or not, are just the latest wave in an AI tide that has been rising for years.
This chaos has a name: Researchers call it the “liar’s dividend.” Proving something is real is expensive, but creating doubt is free. “People, even people in positions of power, can argue that real content – real evidence that they are doing something – is fake,” says Samuel Woolley, chair of disinformation studies at the University of Pittsburgh in the US.
Politicians and others can use the specter of AI as a shield and shout “deepfake” to dismiss reality.
