Seeing Is Not Believing: Realistic AI Videos Disrupt Confidence in Real Videos

A study by researchers at the MIT Media Lab, including Wolf, E., Samaradivakara, Y., Gokhale, O., Ahmed, S., Wang, Y., Pataranutaporn, P., and Maes, P., published in the 2026 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts, found that exposure to realistic AI-generated videos significantly reduces people's confidence in the authenticity of real videos and their perception of reality. The findings highlight a growing challenge to trust in visual media as AI video generation becomes more sophisticated.

Wolf, E., Samaradivakara, Y., Gokhale, O., Ahmed, S., Wang, Y., Pataranutaporn, P., & Maes, P. 2026 . Seeing Is Not Believing: Realistic AI Videos Disrupt Confidence in Authentic Videos and Perceived Reality. In Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI EA '26 . ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3798358