Fake news videos are on the rise. Here’s how to spot them.

by Junna Base November 5, 2024

Jennifer Jolly
| Specially for USA TODAY

A video purporting to show Haitian immigrants illegally voting for Kamala Harris in Georgia continues to circulate as “news” on X (formerly Twitter), even though it has since been thoroughly debunked as a fake and traced to Russia.

Across the social media world on Facebook, the same video appears with the disclaimer that it was “made by Russian influencers.” This is a step in the right direction, but is the damage already done? Millions of people believe the video is real and stick with this story, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

The same goes for another fake video that purports to show a poll worker ripping up votes for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. These are far from the only full-blown hoaxes and misleading videos marring this upcoming election. They are more like the appetizer on a chaos buffet. Misinformation is everywhere. Do you know how to recognize it?

Who is behind the fake videos?

This is just the latest in a spate of viral videos that U.S. intelligence officials say Russia-based trolls are “creating and amplifying” to sow division among Americans in the run-up to and after this week’s election. The FBI issued a new warning Friday, saying China and Iran are also engaging in targeted disinformation this election.

The more these countries can antagonize us, the better. But can viral video propaganda undermine the security and confidence of an entire election? It already has.

Remember the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s finding that Russian interference helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election and fueled polarization and division within American society? Yes, me too.

Why do so many of us fall for false information?

I’ve always said that I’m not sure what the truth is unless I see it with my own eyes. Now that there are AI generated videos and heavily manipulated images, I can’t even trust it anymore.

Living in this “post-truth” news cycle, fighting AI fakes, and separating truth from lies has never been harder, but there are a few handy tools to give you a head start.

How can I tell if a video is AI generated?

AI-generated is getting better every day, but some red flags and dead giveaways remain. According to MIT Media Lab, the most obvious signs include:

Blinking and lip movements: Examine them more closely to see if they follow natural rhythms or seem out of sync.
Reflections in eyes and glasses: do they not match? Is there a reflection? Do they make visual sense?
Does the age of the skin match that of the eyes and hair?

In addition, in most AI videos the hands are often still “off”. There are too many – or too few – fingers and other oddities. Typically, the font appears upside down, backwards, or misspelled on billboards, street signs, or even store names.

Here are a few more ways to spot fakes before you get fooled by them:

1. Use a ready-made AI tool to detect AI fakes

There are some great new tools for detecting AI-generated text, photos, and voice manipulation, but I haven’t yet found a solid tool for checking fake videos. Several are in the works, including Resemble’s Deepware Scanner and Free Deepfake Detector. Still, I also couldn’t spot the fake videos I mentioned at the top of this story.

I suspect that by this time next year we will have better tools for catching fake videos.

The good news is that some text and image scanning apps do a good job of identifying AI creations:

Copy and paste the text from any article into Copyleaks AI Detector. It indicates the probability that a human wrote it compared to an AI author. It is constantly training with new AI models and is therefore hard to beat. Paste the same article text into another AI checker like QuillBot or GPTZero for an additional level of lie destruction.

Checking images is also becoming easier. Use SightEngine as your first line of defense. It recognizes images created by the most popular AI image generators such as MidJourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion and more. Then, if you want to see where else the image has been used, upload it to TinEye. If it is published on reputable news sites and presented as fact, you may feel more comfortable believing what you see.

2. Look deeper than murky sources and your own bias:

Yes, the existence of the Internet accelerates the spread of fake news and may be responsible for the rise in political fear and even violence, but it is also a powerful tool for finding the truth.

If you see a clickbait headline from a website you don’t know or an outrageous claim from a political pundit on social media, grab it and type it straight into Google, Bing, or your search engine of choice.

If the story behind the headline is true, you will see it real News sites that report this – not Bob’s American Dream Blog. If it’s a fake, quarantined only on social media sites, shared by your crazy Uncle Ralph without a link to a source, or already debunked, you can stop.

Never trust a single source, no matter how much you want to believe what you see.

3. Stop sharing something that upsets you:

I did it. You see something outrageous that you want to share and shout from the rooftops, “See, I was right, you’re all crazy and this one post proves it.” Sigh. If only that were the case.

Don’t share it. Stop. Breathe. Fact check. Aside from Googling it and clicking “news” to get to the most likely sources, try a resource designed to separate fact from fiction, such as:

Politifact – Dedicated to researching, confirming and debunking any political news that resonates.
FactCheck.org – Dives deep into dark news stories that fall somewhere between fact and fiction.
Washington Post Fact Checker – Further analysis of volatile news with in-depth research and veracity ratings.
Snopes – One of the most trusted websites for debunking fake news. Not specifically dedicated to politics, but contains a lot of political news.

I love this trick because it’s so obvious, yet so often ignored when we’re in a hurry to say the online version of “I told you so.”

Misleading and false content often carries labels like BREAK! And EXCLUSIVE! to get your attention and break your guard. It’s full of emotion and urgency. The same goes for posts with exaggerated images and flashy graphics. This visual eye candy will get you sharing quickly and without questions. Chances are, the information hidden in a story like this is, at best, grossly distorted and, at worst, an outright lie.

And when it comes to sources, look as far back as possible to find where a story originated. Just because your favorite social media influencer shared it doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact, some of them are also paid by foreign countries to spread lies.

Do not be a tool for Russia or any other country that wants to devastate America from within. We are so much better.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air contributor for “The Today Show.” The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact them at [email protected].

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