You’ve seen the footage. You’ve watched the clip. And at some point in the last few years, you’ve probably stopped and asked: is this even real?
That question used to belong to archivists and forensic experts. Now it belongs to everyone. AI has made it easier to generate, alter, or strip context from images and video, while disinformation campaigns and propaganda operations — run by governments and non-state actors alike — work to shape what the public sees and believes. At the same time, the record faces pressure from other directions: government agencies have removed or altered thousands of public datasets and webpages over the past year, and platforms have deleted or restricted access to years of public archives, from Twitter’s historical record to community forums that vanish when a company changes policy.
This session brings together people working to preserve and authenticate the record on every front: the Archival Producers Alliance, which helps documentary filmmakers verify the integrity of archival material; the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which has preserved more than 1 trillion web pages; and SimPPL, which is using AI to identify what’s influencing you faster than platforms and institutions. Together, they’ll take up the question at the center of it all: how do you keep a public record trustworthy when the tools to fake it, and the incentives to do so, are everywhere?