Arts & Humanities

The Photograph That Never Was

In the Age of AI Image Generation, Can We Still Trust What We See?

Hany Farid

Professor of digital forensics at UC Berkeley, specializing in the detection of manipulated images and the development of content authentication technologies.

February 19, 2026·8 min read

The Photograph That Never Was

Photography has always been considered the most truthful of the visual arts — the camera doesn't lie. But AI image generation has made it trivially easy to create photorealistic images of events that never happened. The implications for journalism, politics, and our shared sense of reality are profound.

TOPICS

photographyAImisinformationdigital mediatruth

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