The single best thing about the internet is how easy it is to find videos of cute animals getting into ridiculous shenanigans. But with the rise of images and videos created by artificial intelligence tools, we’re left asking whether the animals we’re watching are even real.
In the last three years, AI photos and videos have gone from charmingly cruddy to terrifyingly realistic. It’s getting more and more common to find a video on social media and share it, only to find out later that a computer created the entire thing. Just look at last year’s “bunnies on a trampoline” craze, where millions of viewers got tricked by fake security camera footage.
And the distrust has gotten so bad that now even videos confirmed to be real, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech about Iran from March, are getting accused of being made with AI. This is a big problem for those of us who care about what’s real and what’s not online (which should really be all of us!) and don’t want bots manipulating our emotions.
But AI-generated media still isn’t perfect, meaning there are ways to tell it apart from reality. I write about tech for a living, so I know a thing or two about this. I also enlisted computer scientist Jennifer Golbeck, PhD, a professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies who specializes in AI misinformation, and creator Jeremy Carrasco (aka @JeremyFindsAI on TikTok and Instagram), an expert at identifying and debunking AI-generated media. Read on to learn how to tell if a video is AI-generated, as well as any online images you encounter—even when they’re super convincing.
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How common are AI photos and videos on the internet right now?
While we know that AI-generated media is more prevalent than ever, it’s impossible to tell exactly how common it is. That’s not only because it can be hard to figure out what’s real and what’s fake, but also because social media sites are hiding the stats. According to Golbeck, in 2022, nearly every major social media platform cut off access to the tools that researchers used to track the content of online posts. “They don’t want to tell you that they’ve got a huge number of bots and a huge amount of AI-generated content,” she says.
At the same time, these same platforms are making it easier for people to make money from their AI posts. On sites like X, where verified users get paid when other verified accounts interact with their posts, bot farms are being created solely to post and repost one another’s AI slop.
Golbeck explains the “business” behind this. “I have to pay $8 a month for this account,” she says, referring to the cost of a verified X Premium account. “So I’m going to make 10,000 accounts, and that’s going to cost me $80,000 a month. But if I can make more than $8 in revenue per account every month, it ends up being worth it. If all 10,000 of my accounts are monetized, I can have them all interact with each other’s content and get this huge amount of interaction.” This artificial content then gets served to real people too, filling your feed with slop.
And this isn’t even mentioning the people posting AI media for non-monetary purposes, like pushing a political agenda.
How can you spot an AI-generated video?
Creating an AI video that looks totally realistic is a difficult task. That’s true for top-of-the-line AI video models, and especially true for the more outdated versions that plenty of people still use. But they are still pretty darn convincing—especially if you’re not quite sure what to look for. Luckily, we do.
Here are some common “tells” that you can find in AI-generated videos, at least for now.
Moving objects disappear or blend into one another
@rachelthecatlovers Just checked the home security cam and… I think we’ve got guest performers out back! @Ring #bunny #ringdoorbell #ring #bunnies #trampoline ♬ Bounce When She Walk – Ohbayprince & Mykfrexh & GwellaGengSpec
Even the most advanced AI models struggle to keep details consistent over a long time. Let’s go back to the infamous “bunnies on a trampoline” video. At first glance, it seems realistic. But if you look closer, you’ll notice that the rabbit closest to the top of the video suddenly disappears when another rabbit passes it. The bunny closest to the bottom does a 180-degree turn instantly when its colors meld with another rabbit. And a rabbit near the middle of the pack just sort of melts in the video’s last second.
If you want to know how to tell if a video is AI-generated, keep an eye out for mushy anatomy that seems to melt into the rest of the video, as well as backgrounds that change after an object passes over it. You’ll especially notice this in big crowd shots.
The video is blurry or pixelated
We live in a world in which almost every single person has an HD camera in their pocket. But AI videos tend to be much lower quality. This is a common tactic for creators who are trying to hide the physics issues mentioned above. When the entire video is a mess, it’s harder to point out any one issue. This is why so many AI videos claim to be shot with a porch security camera—it gives creators an excuse as to why it’s so blurry. But it also shows up in videos supposedly shot on legitimate cameras, like this viral clip of two strangers meeting on the subway. Why would a modern smartphone camera produce such a blurry clip? (Answer: It wouldn’t.)
AI video models still can’t handle text well either, including both digital and analog clocks. Look out for letters that blend into one another, inconsistent fonts and nonsensical typos. When it comes to clocks, pay attention to whether they’re actually counting numbers in the right order and whether they’re running at the right speed.
The visuals are clean, but the audio is subpar
AI can create text, visual media, and audio. But when a single model tries to do more than one of those things at once, it struggles. This is why the audio in AI-generated videos can be a giveaway. The audio for these AI-generated videos might feature strange echoes and too-fast pacing. Accents might fade in and out, or words can be garbled. And in some cases, the dialogue can use the same tropes as clichéd AI writing. (Forbes provides a few handy examples: groups of three, contrasting rhetorical framing, rhetorical questions and answers that sound a lot like advertising-speak, and inspirational pivots, to name a few)
According to Carrasco, many AI videos that feature people talking also use what he calls an “AI accent.” This accent is characterized by an unnaturally “wired” voice with too much energy. The voices also sound like they’re always promoting something, much like a social media influencer.
And when it comes to videos of celebrities, use common sense. Would the celebrity in question ever actually say what the video shows? An example of this is the AI video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting from a few months ago. The fighting looks great, and the voices are on point. But listen to what Brad Pitt’s AI clone is saying. Do you really think a major action movie would have a character, much less one played by an image-conscious star like Pitt, defending Jeffrey Epstein’s honor? It’s a ridiculous premise.
The video’s only purpose is to make you upset
AI videos can be funny, yes. But the worst people online are the ones who create fake videos as a way to push misinformation and bigoted ideas. Let’s say a video appears on your feed of a politician you don’t like, saying something so shockingly evil that it makes you red with anger. Maybe another video focuses on a child suffering in a way that brings tears to your eyes. Both videos come with a caption asking you to share it. Should you?
It’s true that politicians say awful things sometimes, and the world can be cruel. But before you share the video, do some more research to see whether the video is real or fake. Research consistently shows that fake news spreads faster than real information, because it preys on your most intense emotions. And it’s not hard to create them, so think twice before you share.
The person who posted the video is new, posts only one kind of video or posts at all hours of the day
As AI software improves, we might eventually reach a point where there are no visual signs that a video is fake. That’s why you should practice going beyond the video to look at the bigger picture.
If you’ve found a video that looks suspicious, check out the profile of the person who posted it and see if it matches one of these red flags:
- The account just opened, but it immediately started posting videos seemingly designed to go viral. Best-case scenario, it’s a grifter desperate for online attention. Worst-case scenario, it’s a bot spamming AI videos for a quick buck. Not worth your clicks either way.
- The account posts the same kind of video over and over again. Carrasco notes that “if you give the same prompt to an AI video generator 10 different times, it will spit out 10 different videos. Now you have 10 days’ worth of content.” If the account is posting the same basic video idea with tiny changes, like a different camera angle or color of animal, it’s almost certainly AI.
- The account posts 24/7. Golbeck says that while plenty of people are obsessed with the internet, very few “post like it’s their full-time job” all day, every day. An account that never stops posting might be run by a bot, especially if all they post is political content.
How can you spot an AI-generated photo?
If AI-generated videos have improved by miles, then AI-generated photos have improved by light-years. But not all AI photos are high quality, even when they’re trying to look realistic, meaning there are still flaws that give it away. Classic tells like messed-up text and misshapen hands still appear in older models, and the video tips about looking into a photo’s agenda and the account posting it still apply.
Here are a few more pieces of photo-specific advice.
Humans look unnaturally perfect
For whatever reason—maybe because the models were trained on tons of influencer selfies—AI photo generators have a tendency to make human subjects look bizarrely perfect. In other words, you won’t find any blemishes or pores on their skin, and they’ll always be in full makeup, have perfectly coiffed hair and look like they’re using professional lighting.
“It looks a little too clean,” Golbeck says. “That’s always a tell for me. It looks like a TV show as opposed to reality.”
The background is overly blurred
In photography, a shallow depth of field makes the background blurry while the subject is crystal clear. The Portrait mode on smartphone cameras is designed to create this effect automatically. AI photos tend to overuse this effect. It’s often combined with the perfect quality we mentioned before, creating photos that give off a synthetic look. The controversial “AI influencer” Ana Zelu falls victim to this in a lot of her photos, like this one of her working out. (And no, she’s not a real person.)
The background doesn’t make sense
When someone uses AI to create a photo, the background is where you’ll usually find the most mistakes. If there are people in the background, look closely at them. Do their faces have the correct features, or are they just messy smudges? Are people melting into one another? Do the limbs look right? AI-generated crowd scenes often have a mushy, dreamlike quality to them that gives up the illusion.
The spatial geometry might fail too. Look for wonky perspectives, unusual architecture, paths that lead nowhere, and misaligned windows. “If it’s a picture of somebody’s kitchen,” Golbeck says, “are all the knobs on the doors in the same place? Are the doors the correct width? Did they put handles on the stove? These are little kinds of details.”
What other kinds of fakes should you watch out for?
Fully AI-generated media isn’t the only tool that bad actors use to trick people. There are also deepfakes, a type of misinformation that’s growing in popularity. In deepfakes, the majority of the video is real; the only part that’s altered is usually the subject’s face, which has been switched out for someone else’s. Because these videos don’t have to worry about glitches in the background or weird physics quirks, they can be much more convincing than an AI-generated video.
Deepfakes have been around for a few years now, and they’ve already caused a lot of trouble. In 2024 and 2025, multiple outlets reported on a disturbing trend of students using deepfakes to make pornography featuring their classmates; early this year, posters on X began to do the same, using the platform’s Grok AI to digitally undress other users.
The best way to debunk a deepfake, Carrasco says, is to look for “digital artifacts” around the face or body, which look like unnaturally blurry or flickering pixels. If the subject is moving quickly, the overlaid deepfake might have trouble catching up and you’ll see what’s underneath it. Same goes when something passes over the subject, as the deepfaked overlay will have to disappear and reappear.
There are other low-tech options that fake people out too. In 2019, a viral video claimed to show Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi giving a speech while drunk, but the video had just been slowed down by 25%, making her words sound long and slurred. It was a simple trick, but it worked on a lot of people.
And any recorded video can be edited to remove context, move sentences around, extend pauses to make the speaker seem confused and more. Regard anything you watch online with a dose of skepticism, whether it’s AI-generated or not.
Is the AI-generated media problem only going to get worse?
Will Smith eating spaghetti 3.2 years later
by
u/memerwala_londa in
ChatGPT
Again, this is a question that’s impossible to answer for certain. But yes, the issue is likely to get worse before it gets better, if it ever does. The technology that powers AI-generated photos and videos is getting better every day—just compare the AI-generated videos of Will Smith eating spaghetti from three years ago to the ones created this year. Although it does seem that the price of AI software is going up, the fiercest disinformation specialists can afford it. And open source models, which are free to run once you have the hardware, are improving too.
Social media platforms are doing little to moderate AI-generated media. Most sites “require” users to tag AI-generated posts as such, but that rule is rarely enforced, and the AI tags are hard to see. When asked what the U.S. government might do to address the issue, both Golbeck and Carrasco were pessimistic about the possibilities.
If you want to avoid low-quality AI disinformation altogether, your best bet is to get off algorithm-driven platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok, and Instagram. And if that’s not an option, Carrasco recommends curating your feed so you’re seeing more content from people you know and trust, and less from strangers.
When you do find someone you might want to follow, make sure they’re not flying any of the red flags we mentioned earlier. Taking a few minutes to prove someone’s not peddling AI slop will save you a lot of brain cells later.
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of articles on personal technology, arming readers with the knowledge to protect themselves against cybersecurity threats and internet scams as well as revealing the best tips, tricks and shortcuts for computers, cellphones, apps, texting, social media and more. For this piece on how to tell if a video is AI-generated, William Antonelli tapped his experience as a prolific tech writer to ensure that all information is accurate and offers the best possible advice to readers. We rely on credentialed experts with personal experience and know-how as well as primary sources including tech companies, professional organizations and academic institutions. We verify all facts and data and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Jennifer Golbeck, PhD, AI expert and professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies; phone interview, April 2026
- Jeremy Carrasco, media producer and AI debunker on @JeremyFindsAI; phone interview, April 2026
- Snopes: “Fact Check: Video doesn’t show Netanyahu with 6 fingers per hand, isn’t AI”
- Forbes: “The Seven Deadly Tells of AI Writing”
- @JeremyFindsAI: “What is the AI accent?”
- Science: “The spread of true and false news online”
- The Atlantic: “High School Is Becoming a Cesspool of Sexually Explicit Deepfakes”
- 404 Media: “Elon Musk’s Grok AI Will ‘Remove Her Clothes’ in Public, on X”
- @JeremyFindsAI: “Deepfakes vs AI videos”
- FactCheck: “Manipulated Video Targeting Pelosi Goes Viral”
- Forrester: “Tech Leaders, Brace Yourselves: AI Costs Will Only Go Up”
- @JeremyFindsAI: “It doesn’t need to be this hard!”
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