Artificial Intelligence: The World's Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes

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

22. Juni 2026 um 15:30 Uhr / Von Eli Saslow, The New York Times

Dr. Hany Farid speaks during a SAG-AFTRA Discussion on Deepfakes at SAG-AFTRA on May 6, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Bild: Maury Phillips/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA

BERKELEY, Calif. – The emails began to arrive on a Sunday morning, as the worst ones often did. Hany Farid opened the first message at his home in the hills above Berkeley, California, and found a link to a viral video purporting to show a U.S.-made missile hitting an elementary school in Iran, where more than 150 people had been killed, most of them children. "Is this an internet hoax or an international war crime?" one note read. "We're trying to verify what's real."

Farid grabbed a pencil and a notepad, leaned into his computer and watched. He saw blue sky, telephone wires and a few palm trees swaying in the wind. And then a missile streaked across the screen, clear and unmistakable even at 500 mph. It looked like a scene from a video game. In the past few days, Farid had reviewed dozens of convincing artificial intelligence-generated videos of fake bombings, fake plane crashes, fake fires and fake executions. His instinct was to be skeptical. He was nearly certain the video was another fake.