Artificial intelligence has changed a lot in the world of news, and not all of it for the better.
There was a time when a good journalism professor was all it took to teach that healthy skepticism is not distrust — it is responsibility.
William D. Downs Jr. spent 41 years training journalists at Ouachita Baptist University, and one of the phrases he repeated like a mantra was straight to the point: if your mother says she loves you, get three sources to confirm it. Another one he hammered home was: trust nobody and assume nothing.
Downs was no joke. A former military instructor in the 1950s, he took journalism seriously and demanded that every student who came through his program do the same. His list of maxims was endless, but they all converged on the same point: respectable journalists seek facts, verify them, and verify them again, regardless of the source.
But there was one saying of his that fits the current world like a glove: believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.
Today, that maxim would need a far more radical update.
With AI generating videos, texts, and images that look 100% real, perhaps the most honest version of that phrase would be: believe nothing you hear and nothing you see — at least not before you verify it.
And the problem is not just technological.
It is human.
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A massive number of people, including Christians, are believing practically everything they see and hear on social media and even from traditional news outlets, simply because they are not exercising the discernment needed to separate the real from the fabricated.
The good news is that the Christian tradition already has an answer for this, and it is more than two thousand years old.
We just need to remember it. 👇
When AI Becomes a Lie Factory
Artificial intelligence is not a villain by nature, but in the wrong hands it becomes an extremely powerful tool for spreading misinformation. What once required entire teams of video editing specialists, graphic designers, and writers can now be done in minutes by anyone with access to a computer and a free account on some generative AI platform. Deepfakes that mimic the voices of political leaders, synthetic images of events that never happened, entire articles written with impeccable journalistic tone but stuffed with false data. That is the current landscape, and it is getting more sophisticated with every passing week.
A concrete and recent example involves the wave of AI-generated fake videos related to the conflict with Iran. Videos showing an alleged Iranian counterattack against Tel Aviv and against the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — the tallest building in the world — circulated massively on the X platform, viewed by millions of people. They were completely fabricated. What made the situation even more absurd was that when BBC journalists asked the Grok chatbot to verify the authenticity of the videos, the chatbot itself incorrectly insisted the footage was real. In other words, even the AI tools that were supposed to help with fact-checking failed spectacularly.
Both Facebook and X have fact-checking tools designed specifically to combat fake news. Ironically, many users dismiss the fact-checks themselves as false, especially when they contradict their pre-existing opinions. It is a vicious cycle fueled by selective distrust.
What makes all of this even more disturbing is the phenomenon researchers call the belief perseverance effect. A study conducted by communication psychologists at University College London found that participants who watched deepfake videos continued to be influenced by the content even after being informed the videos were fabricated. Read that again: people knew it was a lie and still chose to believe it. The human brain was designed to recognize patterns and store information quickly, not necessarily to fact-check everything it consumes. And when artificial intelligence can mimic the visual and textual style of trusted sources, that verification process becomes even harder for the average person.
And the numbers do not lie. A 2024 study conducted by researchers at Cornell University revealed that, over a one-year period, AI-generated misinformation grew by 57.3% on traditional websites and a staggering 474% on websites dedicated to spreading misinformation. The scale of the problem is growing at an exponential pace, and our defenses are still trying to catch up.
In the context of journalism, this represents an unprecedented credibility crisis. Traditional outlets that spent decades building their reputations can be imitated with frightening precision by AI-generated content, and the average reader simply has no way to tell one from the other without a conscious effort to verify. The speed at which information travels on social media makes the problem worse, because sharing happens before reflection. You see it, you believe it, you share it, and only afterward — if you are lucky — do you discover it was fake. But by then the damage is already done.
The Role of Algorithms and Confirmation Bias
People generally do not seek balance when forming their opinions, and studies show they tend to consume news sources that reinforce perspectives they already hold. Social media algorithms feed this behavior by delivering more of what the user already wants to see, creating information bubbles that make people even more susceptible to AI-generated fake news.
A global study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour brought a particularly revealing finding: participants with strong ideological opinions frequently demonstrated more confidence in their ability to detect misinformation than their actual performance justified. In other words, the people who believe they are the least susceptible to misinformation are among the most vulnerable to believing lies. It is a paradox that fuels the problem silently and persistently.
Given this scenario, some journalism experts argue that the solution necessarily involves a cultural shift, not just a technological one. There is no point in creating deepfake detection tools if people do not have the habit of using them before sharing something. There is no point in developing automated fact-checking systems if the population lacks the discernment to question what it consumes. Technology can help, but the real transformation needs to happen in people’s mindset, and that is work that goes far beyond any algorithm.
The Specific Vulnerability of Christians
Christians face a particular vulnerability in this context. When a person they place high trust in — a pastor, a community leader, an admired author — spreads false information, whether intentionally or not, the tendency is to believe and share without questioning. Fabricated inspirational stories, questionable theological content wrapped in emotional packaging, and politically charged posts loaded with emotional appeal circulate frequently in faith communities, often without anyone stopping to verify accuracy before hitting the share button.
The Christian tradition, however, has always valued discernment as a genuine spiritual virtue, not merely as an intellectual skill. In the book of 1 John, chapter 4, verse 1, the apostle instructs believers not to believe every spirit, but to test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. That instruction was written more than two thousand years ago, but its relevance to the present moment is striking.
The Bible is quite direct about this. Proverbs 15:14 says that the discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly. Proverbs 14:15 adds: the simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps. For the Christian who consumes and shares news on social media, there is a responsibility that goes beyond a simple digital habit — there is a spiritual and moral dimension to every decision to pass information along.
Christianity also provides an ethical framework that makes spreading misinformation morally unacceptable, not just socially inconvenient. Spreading lies, even without malicious intent, violates fundamental principles like love for neighbor and commitment to truth. Putting it plainly: sharing unverified claims is a modern form of bearing false witness. And that is no small thing.
The Example of the Bereans
This is where one of the most powerful references in the New Testament comes into play for this moment. The Bereans, described in Acts 17, were called noble in character. They received the apostle Paul’s message with genuine enthusiasm — they were not closed-minded or naturally suspicious people. But at the same time, they examined the Scriptures daily to verify whether what they heard was true.
This posture is extraordinary because it combines two things we rarely see together on social media: openness and verification. The Bereans did not reject Paul outright, but they also did not accept everything without examining it. They listened carefully and then checked. That is the practical definition of healthy discernment.
The Bereans remind us that faithfulness is not naivety. Listening with enthusiasm and verifying with care are not contradictory attitudes — they are complementary. And that combination is exactly what we need in the age of AI-generated information.
Discernment as a Daily Practice
Developing discernment in the face of artificial intelligence is not a task you complete — it is an ongoing practice. Just as a musician needs to practice every day to maintain their skill, the critical reader needs to constantly exercise their ability to question sources, verify information, and resist the impulse to share something just because it looks true or because it confirms what they already believe.
Being a Berean in the age of AI starts with the discipline of waiting before reposting something that triggers outrage or fear. Social media rewards speed and reaction, but discernment demands a pause. The fundamental question is: do I know this is true, or does it simply confirm what I already believe?
In practice, a few simple habits make an enormous difference:
- Check multiple sources before accepting any information as fact. If only one website or account is reporting something, be skeptical.
- Recognize emotional manipulation and ask yourself: is this informing me objectively, or is it inflaming me emotionally?
- Prioritize biblical wisdom over speculative information. Excessive news consumption, especially hours spent watching single sources or consuming algorithm-driven feeds, can distort perspective and fuel anxiety.
- Remember that truthfulness is a Christian witness. Sharing misinformation damages the witness of any Christian, and passing along unverified claims is, plain and simple, a modern form of bearing false witness.
- Scrutinize images and videos with extra care. In the age of deepfakes, visual content is no longer a guarantee of anything.
These questions and habits do not require advanced technical knowledge — they just require a willingness to pause before acting. And that pause, as simple as it may seem, is the first step toward genuine discernment, both in the journalistic sense and in the spiritual sense.
A Tsunami of Fabricated Content
There is a growing tsunami of AI-fabricated news and information that is destabilizing our culture, bombarding our senses, disorienting our perspective, and attacking truth at its core. Artificial intelligence will keep evolving, and the tools for generating fake content will only become more sophisticated. There is no finish line where the problem will be solved.
What does exist is the daily choice to be a person who pursues truth with seriousness, who treats the act of informing and being informed as something with moral weight, and who understands that discernment is not paranoid distrust but responsibility toward others.
Maybe we do not need three sources when our mothers say they love us. But we certainly need to pause and consider whether we can really believe what we hear and see before embracing anything as truth.
That is a lesson that good journalism and Christianity teach together — even if they rarely show up in the same sentence. 🙏
