How AI Is Rewriting Reality—And Why Media Literacy Is Our Best Defense

Dr. Lyric Mandell of MOXY Company is a media strategist and scholar merging credibility, creativity, and culture to shape communication.
We live in a society where AI-generated images of presidents in papal robes or pop stars in pitiful props aren't just the brainchildren of bored internet users—they now circulate through official channels and have real-world consequences. The rise of AI-driven visuals from sources as superfluous as anonymous Reddit threads to as sacred as the White House shows how blurred the line between satire and statecraft is, and it's not just political theater. When military agencies experiment with deepfakes and public health campaigns feature AI-generated humans, it becomes clear: This is no longer just about technological novelty—it's a crisis of perception, authority and what we, as a society, agree to call 'real.'
In his 2005 book discussing 'BS,' Harry Frankfurt reminds us that much of what circulates in public life is neither truth nor lie—it's language used without any regard for the truth. In the digital age, that indifference becomes content. And when this kind of insincerity becomes visually striking and algorithmically optimized, the danger isn't just that we misinterpret the message—it's that we stop caring whether the message is real.
For communicators, this shift is seismic. We now operate in a landscape where audiences often don't care about who shares something—only how it makes them feel or how frequently it appears in their feed. And perhaps more unsettling is that much of this isn't malicious; it's rooted in media illiteracy. The erosion of traditional credibility markers—expertise, authorship and institutional trust—forces communicators to ask complex questions: How do we create messages that resonate in a reality where factual grounding is optional but ethical responsibility isn't? The stakes aren't just strategic—they're societal.
Research suggests that false information spreads six times faster than truth and often appears professional enough to pass as fact, even influencing how governments, organizations and the public respond to events. As AI grows more adept at mimicking human behavior, our critical filters weaken.
Although the technology is new, the terrain is familiar. As early as 1922, journalist Walter Lippmann theorized in Public Opinion that people respond not to actual events but to the 'pictures inside our heads'—mental shortcuts or 'stereotypes' that help us navigate chaos. In an age where media circulates in many-to-many networks, AI doesn't just reinforce those images; it manufactures them at scale.
Media theorist Neil Postman calls this the entertainment-ization of public discourse. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, he argues that television renders 'serious' ideas digestible only when entertaining. AI-generated media becomes Postman's nightmare realized: politics as parody and medicine as memes.
This overflow of information, although entertaining, also drains us. With people spending over two hours a day on social media, each swipe delivers another micro-dose of engagement—or irritation.
This content overload leads to what scholars describe as 'information fatigue syndrome'—a cognitive condition marked by emotional burnout, decision paralysis and, most alarmingly, active avoidance of news and discourse. Research from Reuters suggests that people don't turn away from the news out of apathy—they retreat because the content feels repetitive, emotionally exhausting and beyond their power to influence.
In an ecosystem where audiences can't—or won't—filter every post for truth or relevance, trust becomes optional and attention becomes reflexive. And AI accelerates this breakdown. When content never stops and everything feels true, our brains default to shortcuts. We adopt Lippmann's stereotypes—those 'pictures in our heads'—because interrogating every piece of media proves too exhausting.
The antidote isn't withdrawal—it's critical literacy. In an 'apathy economy' where content circulates without conviction, modern communicators must create signals worthy of the scarce, fatigued attention users still possess—but at what cost?
For communicators, this shift demands more than creative recalibration—it requires ethical clarity. In an environment where virality often outperforms veracity, the temptation rises: optimize for engagement, lean into outrage and co-opt the aesthetic of authenticity without accountability.
But the real challenge isn't just how to get attention—it's how to deserve it.
Credibility is no longer a given. If we want audiences to engage intentionally rather than impulsively, we must build trust actively—and often, uphill.
This means resisting the allure of AI shortcuts that produce volume without value. It means recognizing that saturation breeds cynicism, and most importantly, it means creating content that contributes to literacy, not just visibility.
Frankfurt warns that 'BS' is dangerous not because it's false but because it's indifferent. Postman warns that spectacle smothers substance, and Lippmann warns that our internal 'pictures' overpower facts.
Today, all three thinkers converge at the intersection of AI and public discourse.
The real danger we face isn't just misinformation—it's the erosion of consensus, not consensus as shared opinions but of shared processes: a collective understanding of how we evaluate and prioritize truth, source credibility and what constitutes reliable evidence. In a world where every post, video or AI-generated image circulates with the same weight—regardless of origin or intent—that consensus collapses.
This collapse doesn't just disrupt public trust; it dismantles the conditions that make disagreement productive. Without a baseline agreement on how we determine what's real—and more importantly, why truth should still matter—we lose the ability to disagree meaningfully. We don't just fight over facts—we fight over whether facts exist at all.
For communicators, this places a unique responsibility at our feet. We're not just competing in an attention economy but shaping a reality economy. Every message we craft doesn't just influence a market; it contributes to—or corrodes—the broader information environment.
We must evaluate our impact not just within KPIs but across our social world. If we're all architects of attention, we're also stewards of its consequences—and that includes preserving a cultural commitment to truth itself.
Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

CNN

35 minutes ago

• CNN

Vance refers to Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla as ‘José' while defending Trump's use of National Guard in LA

Vice President JD Vance on Friday took a swipe at Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, whom he incorrectly called 'José Padilla,' and defended the Trump administration's controversial use of the California National Guard in Los Angeles. 'I was hoping José Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, guess he decided not to show up because there wasn't the theater, and that's all it is,' Vance told reporters, speaking from an FBI mobile command center that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently using in Los Angeles. Vance dismissed Padilla's appearance last week at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference as 'pure political theater.' Padilla was forcefully removed, ordered to the ground by law enforcement and placed in handcuffs after attempting to ask Noem a question. Padilla, California's first Latino elected to the US Senate, had interrupted Noem as she was giving remarks in the Los Angeles FBI headquarters on the Trump administration's response to protests in that city against Noem's department and its immigration-enforcement efforts. When asked about the vice president calling the senator by the wrong first name, Vance's spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk brushed it off, telling CNN, 'He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.' Padilla's communications director Tess Oswald wrote on X, 'As a former colleague of Senator Padilla, the Vice President knows better. He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots. Another unserious comment from an unserious administration.' California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also called Vance out on X, saying it was 'not an accident.' On Friday, Vance also reacted to a federal appeals court allowing President Donald Trump to maintain control over thousands of California National Guardsmen. 'That determination was legitimate, and the president's going to do it again if he has to, but hopefully it won't be necessary,' Vance said. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday granted a request from Trump to lift, for now, a lower-court ruling that had required the president to relinquish control of roughly 4,000 guardsmen from the Golden State that he had federalized to beef up security in Los Angeles amid unrest over immigration enforcement. 'And I think what the Ninth Circuit said very clearly is when the president makes a determination, you've got to send in certain federal officials to protect people,' Vance said, while lashing out at California's Democratic leadership for their handling of the unrest. The vice president also defended the administration's immigration policy, saying Trump wants to prioritize deportations of violent offenders or 'really bad guys,' but that no one who's undocumented should feel immune from enforcement. When asked whether the administration's deportation tactics had gone too far, Vance argued that he didn't think 'we've been too aggressive.' 'Anytime we make a mistake we correct that very quickly,' Vance said.

Yahoo

37 minutes ago

• Yahoo

River group, city meet to talk about access to the Black River

Jun. 19—WATERTOWN — A group of river activists and the city have started working out their longtime differences regarding the group's concerns about access to the Black River. Members of New York Rivers United, a group of whitewater advocates and rafting enthusiasts, met with city officials last Friday to talk about a series of projects that they would like to see completed to give them more river access. The hour-long Zoom meeting "was cordial and productive," said New York Rivers United member Alex Barham, adding that he was satisfied with its outcome. City Manager Eric Wagenaar said he thought it "was a good meeting." For more than a decade, the group and the city were at odds over what is known as the Route 3 Wave, once a popular whitewater kayaking course that was a site of a world championship that drew thousands of spectators. A large rock moved in its way and damaged the course. But the city never corrected the issue. According to Rivers United, the repairs were required by a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license for the city's Marble Street hydroelectric plant. The city has now agreed to look at the Route 3 Wave. Rivers United members and city officials will go to the site in August when river levels are down to see what can be done to fix the problem, Barham said. The city also has agreed to repair some stairs to the river and complete other repairs along the river near Newell Street, Wagenaar said. "We have to work on some things with them," Wagenaar said. In December, Rivers United, which advocates for accessibility to the river, filed a complaint with FERC about the city never correcting the Route 3 Wave problem. The group also has claimed that the city violated the hydro plant's FERC license on a daily basis since it was renewed in 1995. The river group conducted an audit of the facility that found numerous alleged violations. That prompted the state Department of Environmental Conservation to urge FERC to conduct a noncompliance investigation into the plant. In May, a six-member team from the DEC completed an on-site inspection of the hydro plant. Wagenaar said Wednesday that the DEC will be back next week for a follow-up visit. FERC also required the city to submit a report about the group's complaints about the hydro plant. The city submitted the report last Friday. "They're looking at it," he said, adding that he doesn't know when FERC will complete its response. Rivers United members Steve Massaro and Barham and Dick McDonald of the state Department of Environmental Conservation attended the meeting with the city. City Engineer Tom Compo, hydro plant employee Jeffrey Hammond, Michael A. Lumbis, the city's planning and community development director, and Wagenaar were among the city officials at the meeting. In 1995, the river group, the DEC and FERC negotiated the terms of the current license, designed to mitigate significant commercial, environmental and recreational impacts identified during the relicensing process. Under the 1995 agreement, an account was set up to distribute funding for river accessibility projects. The city and Rivers United were at loggerheads over who decided how to spend that money. The group claimed the city spent about $60,000 from that account, but the DEC and Rivers United never approved it. About $225,000 remains in the account.

Washington Post

38 minutes ago

• Washington Post

US evacuates 79 staff and family from embassy in Israel as more Americans ask how to leave

WASHINGTON — The U.S. evacuated 79 staff and families from the U.S. Embassy in Israel on Friday as the conflict between Israel and Iran intensifies and growing numbers of private American citizens seek information on how to leave Israel and Iran. An internal State Department memo says the military flight, the second known to have occurred this week, left Tel Aviv for Sofia, Bulgaria, where some or all of the passengers were to get a connecting charter flight to Washington. The document, which was obtained by The Associated Press, also said that more than 6,400 U.S. citizens in Israel had filled out an online form on Friday alone asking for information about when and if the U.S. government would organize evacuation flights. An additional 3,265 people, some of whom may also have competed the form, called an emergency number seeking assistance. The document estimated that between 300 and 500 people per day could need evacuation assistance should the U.S. decide to offer flights or ships to get Americans out, as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has said is being considered. There are some 700,000 Americans in Israel, many of them dual nationals, according to estimates, although the exact number at any given time is unclear because U.S. citizens are not required to notify the embassy if they are there or when they might leave. Earlier Friday, before the memo was distributed, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters that more than 25,000 Americans had reached out for information on leaving Israel, the West Bank and Iran. She told reporters that those people had sought 'information and support' and were 'seeking guidance' on departing. She would not give a breakdown of where the queries had come from and would not comment on embassy evacuations. In Iran, the document said that at least 84 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, or Green Card holders, had crossed into neighboring Azerbaijan by land since the conflict began and that an additional 774 had been granted permission to enter as of Friday. Nearly 200 American citizens and Green Card holders are awaiting permission to travel overland from Iran to neighboring Turkmenistan, it said.