The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes

[Sandra Holdsworth]

In the age of A.I., Hany Farid is struggling to prove what’s real before the internet decides for itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/us/ai-deepfake-hany-farid.html

[Chris Johnston]

@Sandra-Holdsworth

Thanks for sharing Sandra, that is both deeply disturbing and depressing. But it's also very definitely a need to know.

[Jenna Kedy 0]

@Sandra-Holdsworth As a healthcare advocate, this article honestly stopped me in my tracks. A huge part of my work is built on stories; patients sharing their experiences, researchers sharing findings, clinicians sharing knowledge, and communities coming together around a shared understanding of what is real. As someone who has shared my own story about juvenile arthritis, sepsis, mental health, and navigating the healthcare system, it’s unsettling to think about a future where seeing a video or hearing a voice may not be enough to know if something is authentic. At the same time, it reminds me why trust, relationships, and lived experience matter so much. Technology will keep evolving, but healthcare is still ultimately about people. We need systems that help us verify information while protecting the voices of real patients and advocates. For me, the biggest takeaway is that digital literacy is becoming a health issue. Just like we teach people how to understand health information, we may soon need to teach people how to recognize what’s real online. Because when trust is lost, healthcare, research, and advocacy all become harder. It’s exciting technology, but it also makes me appreciate genuine human connection and authentic patient stories more than ever.

[Chris Johnston]

@Jenna-Kedy-0 @Sandra-Holdsworth

I totally agree about the need for education to address health literacy, health data literacy and digital literacy. I'm a big fan of continuous learning in general and free learning opportunities for everyone on important matters like this.

But what I took away from this article is that learning may be part of the solution - but learning alone won't solve it.

If the leading expert in digital forensics doesn't trust himself to tell what's real from what's fake anymore, despite decades of experience, acquired expertise and having access to all the tools he's been involved in developing to do exactly that - then I'm not sure what learning content could help.

As an instructional developer, my starting point would be to find subject matter experts to collaborate with to develop the content - but he is the foremost expert and he's clearly struggling because the tech is evolving so fast.

Learning opportunities could focus on raising awareness of the issue, and teach people to be cautious, but that won't help much and it won't help for long.

Perhaps a more direct approach might be to rally people to lobby governments to take more direct action such as:

• Serious penalties for those creating fakes with the capacity to defraud, mislead or harm individuals.

• Serious penalties for vendors that don't build safeguards into their products to ensure they can't be used to defraud, mislead or harm.

• Serious penalties for social media companies that allow their sites to be flooded by fake info because it increases their profits.

And by serious penalties, I don't mean fines that sound large but equate to peanuts for large corporations. I mean:

• Fines that significantly impact their bottom line.

• As well as the potential for jail time for those at the top of organizations who are knowingly profiting from allowing such harms to persist.

• And if they still prove reluctant to mend their ways, then license restrictions that curtail their ability to generate revenue, offer services, or ultimately, operate in any form in Canadian markets.

Smaller firms, e.g. manufacturers of household goods, face stiff penalties if their goods are shown to be in breach of quality standards, can be charged with criminal negligence if someone is harmed by their product, and can have their license revoked for repeated violations.

It's time to apply the same standard to bigger corporations that aren't just harming small numbers of individuals, but subjecting entire populations to harm on a daily basis for the sake of profit.