Sam Gregory

With @cward1e, talked to @hari for @AmanpourCoPBS deep-dive on how #AI content is impacting elections Satire to deception to resurrection to dismissing the real....highlighting detection challenges, avoiding blaming ourselves, and pipeline responsibility youtu.be/OPYv9SvY4Uk?si…

"We take misinformation seriously... [so we decided destroy trust in a key reference point in the epistemology of journalists, fact checkers and researchers]" Well done, you put Synth ID in it. Now fact-checkers can write an article after it's used to create a viral fake story.

@NewsFromGoogle This was utterly predictable - and would have been indicated by journalists, war crimes investigators and OSINT folks - and on top of that there doesn't seem to be a good reason to trade off trust in Google Earth for jamming in AI on another product techpolicy.press/google-earth-a…

Re: our statement on Image Generation in Google Earth: “We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. We’ve seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes, however we’ve also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies. So we’re rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn’t appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated.”

In @techpolicypress shirin anlen and I on a foreseeable fiasco: how Google briefly turned one of the world's most trusted sources of evidence into a generator of plausible fakes, and why tech cos must consult civil society experts before launch, not after techpolicy.press/google-earth-a…

Why would Google do this? Because the prioritization of ground truth for journalism, and our shared sense of reality - is less important than "custom images to help you visualize history, create real estate plans, and more." And no, us checking every image is not the answer.

🎥 Deepfakes: Can you trust anything you see online anymore? New @TBIJ series 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒆𝒅: 𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑨𝑰 𝑮𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝑾𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈 out now! The reasons we need to worry, why we need to act, and winners/losers in the deepfakes fight (spoiler: not us) youtube.com/watch?v=_s0x7v…

How can journalists navigate the rising threat of deepfakes and synthetic media? @SamGregory introduces the Deepfakes Rapid Response Force, a project from @witnessorg that connects reporters with forensic experts to verify suspicious content and protect reporting integrity. Watch the full Lightning Talk from #MediaParty 2025 now available here👇 mediaparty.org/2026/04/16/sam…

Great conversation with Tai Nalon and Felix Simon at #ijf26 on "When seeing is no longer believing: perils and possibilities in a world of synthetic media" with our differing viewpoints on scope, societal implications, and what to do youtube.com/watch?v=yYwu8H…

OpenAI is shutting down Sora. But the damage is done: normalized AI slop, eroded trust in what's real, detection inadequate, provenance tools still MIA without senior company leadership, shameful normalization of likeness theft. Thanks, but no thanks, Sam linkedin.com/feed/update/ur…

Iran is the worst-case scenario for everything we’ve been warning about: AI fakes, civilian footage dismissed as fabricated, and underneath it all, a regime that has engineered the doubt itself. “The problem is curated access. The regime controls who gets to document and what gets documented.” I spoke to @morganmeaker for Bloomberg Weekend on the information war in the Iran war. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Hyper-realistic AI both to create fantasy images that illustrate people's hopes, and where the wish that something is fake finds a ready-made access point via poor forensic analysis: Talked with @chowarchis @boomlive_in about is it/isn't it Netanyahu vids boomlive.in/explainers/net…

New piece with shirin anlen based on our work at @witnessorg on how 'forensic cosplay' (h/t @CraigSilverman) is being used to discredit authentic photos of civilian casualties in the Iran war. The fake heatmap and "ELA" case spread through my own networks. People I know concluded the photos were fake, primed by justified distrust of state sources. That distrust is legitimate. But it can lead to dangerous denialism. With references to @Shayan86 and @talhagin who have been working on the deluge of AI cases during this war and insights from forensics specialists.

This past week I wrote about what we’re seeing now: evidence and documentation of what’s actually happening being actively undermined by a polluted info environment with AI accelerating the damage.

Since the Iran-Israel war began in June, @WITNESSorg has been tracking how AI is reshaping the information environment around the conflict, starting with this piece with @samgregory and work that fed into a recent @OversightBoard ruling on governing AI content during war.

At the report launch, our Executive Director @SamGregory discussed the impact of AI on humanitarian action in an increasingly complex information environment and the need to maintain the ability to know what is real. 📲Read more here: blog.witness.org/2026/03/ifrc-w…

The moral collapse of OpenAI in one repost.

In an AI-shaped world, video is still crucial for accountability, but its credibility is under pressure. 🔗Read the full @nytimes article where our Executive Director, @SamGregory, discusses this “deeply contradictory” moment and how we can still show what’s real with video: nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/…

It's a paradoxical moment: a fog of doubt settles over our AI-slop timelines, yet bystander video in Minneapolis powerfully reaffirms witnessing. I talked to the @nytimes about the world we're in. Defending reality in this world is what @witnessorg does. nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/…

"We are not built to watch murders on our phones…then casually scroll to a job update." @baratunde began. Then...how to witness ICE/CBP violence, discern real from fake, and build archives of accountability despite AI. It's our work @witnessorg lifewithmachines.media/p/seeing-is-no…

I'm co-hosting a new BBC podcast! It's called The Interface, and it's all about how tech is rewiring your week and your world. bbc.com/mediacentre/bb…