MINNEAPOLIS — Raise your hand if you’ve been questioning the veracity of real events, news stories and images posted on social media lately.

It used to be we’d have to tiptoe around a minefield of hoaxes only once a year, on April 1. But thanks to the proliferation of misinformation spawned by artificial intelligence, every day on the internet is an exercise in judgment and media literacy. This landscape of bot-generated clutter has also hardened us to become cynical about the truth.

Even the cultural juggernaut that is “KPop Demon Hunters” fell into this black hole of deep doubt. This summer’s animated musical about an all-female K-pop band, Huntr/x, saving the world is the most popular Netflix movie of all time. It has also dominated the music charts. The soundtrack climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, and its inspirational single “Golden” is the No. 1 song in the country — an achievement it’s held for seven weeks.

Yet the overwhelming popularity of the music led some to apparently assume that the performances were, well, done by robots. Over the summer, a user of the social platform X opined that the success of “Golden” amounted to a shift toward AI “completely taking over the music industry.”

That post, viewed nearly 13 million times, launched plenty of online chatter, including a response from one of the three human musicians who sang vocals for the song. Rei Ami wrote, “EJAE, AUDREY NUNA AND I ARE NOT AI.“ She also asked if people were really that dumb.

Maybe not dumb. But confused. And who can blame them?

Nearly a third of all content on the internet is made by bots, according to cybersecurity firm Cloudflare. Known as “AI slop,” it can range from nonsensical talking kittens on YouTube to one-skillet dinner recipes on Pinterest that link to spam-filled blogs. Owners of “engagement-bait” accounts may churn out flat-out lies and draw high engagement, trick algorithms into boosting their visibility, and then sell the accounts to make money.

We also live in absurd times, where reality seems implausible. I remember thinking there is absolutely no way the president of the United States shared a social media post that said, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.” Or that he held a press conference in which he urged pregnant women to “fight like hell” through pain or sickness so as to avoid taking Tylenol. But those events actually happened.

Trump has embraced artificial intelligence to mock and satirize his opponents. Last week he shared a deep-fake video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a fabricated voice. And before Trump was reelected, he shared an AI-generated picture of Taylor Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit, implying she had endorsed him. (She did not.)

The “Demon Hunters” controversy fascinated Hannah Covington, a fan of the movie and its soaring vocals, who works for the national nonpartisan group the News Literacy Project.

“It’s easy in the age of AI to dismiss something potentially as fake, or to even question true artistry, because we’re surrounded by so much slop,” she said. “This is what bad actors on the internet want. It’s not to make you fall for just one untrue rumor or one untrue claim or one bad take on social media. It’s to make you distrust everything.”

Covington, a former reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune, said the teenagers she works with in high schools on media literacy are wary about emerging technologies and realize much is at stake.

A 2024 survey commissioned by her organization found that 8 in 10 teens on social media reported seeing posts that spread or promoted conspiracy theories. Of those, 81% said they were inclined to believe one or more of them.

I’d argue that professional journalism is the antidote to the onslaught of fake news. But there is reason those in my industry should be terrified: Nearly half of the teens surveyed believed the press does more to harm democracy than protect it.

A separate poll spearheaded by Center for Youth and AI and YouGov found that most teens believe lawmakers should make it a top priority to address the potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence. The biggest threats they viewed were misinformation and deep fakes.

Public disillusionment with the information landscape can decimate democracy. If the audience cannot discern truth from fiction, it will make it even harder to hold public figures accountable when they’re caught in the act.

Sometimes it makes for a good joke. Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve humorously denied that it was her dancing and partying with players Natisha Hiedeman and Courtney Williams, a viral moment that was captured on the StudBudz livestream at the WNBA All-Star weekend in July. The next morning after practice, Reeve reminded people that they shouldn’t believe everything they see on the internet. “That was AI,” she joked. “I was in bed.”

But at its worst, a world where reality is indistinguishable from misinformation could mean people won’t believe true events, and politicians can easily dismiss any unflattering information about them. Researchers describe this benefit to those who are doing the deceiving as the “liar’s dividend.”

In a pre-AI age, the public would press for damning video or audio evidence to prove a scandal actually happened. Now I worry that such evidence could be served up on a platter, and people would suspect the footage is fabricated.

Can you imagine if the nation shrugged after seeing the photograph of Emmett Till’s young, mutilated Black body? Or if they cried “fake news” at the picture of the so-called napalm girl, Kim Phuc, running and screaming from an aerial attack during Vietnam? Sadly, some people could dismiss the fact that children are suffering in Gaza because bot-generated images being circulated about the crisis have eroded their trust in what they see.

“That’s what scares me about this technology,” Covington says. “It can be weaponized to shape and distort public opinion.”

Covington urges young people consuming media to be skeptical but not cynical. If you have doubts about the information presented to you, search the internet and find credible sources. If you see a viral claim insisting your favorite soundtrack is the work of AI, wait for the movie credits and google the names of actors and musicians. Watch videos of them talking about the songwriting and recording process.

If you’re still in doubt about the authenticity of “Kpop Demon Hunters,” tune in Tuesday to “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.” Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami — the women behind the singing trio Huntr/x — are expected to sing “Golden” in their first-ever live TV appearance.

You’ll see that there’s a lot in this world to be skeptical about, but powerful, ear-catching pop is still alive, and very much real.

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(Laura Yuen is a columnist for The Minnesota Star Tribune.)

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