The health of the shared information environment that lets a society agree on basic facts. Cheap, convincing synthetic content stresses it in two ways: fabricated material can be believed, and genuine material can be dismissed as fabricated. The second effect may matter more than the first.
Technical view
Threats include personalised persuasion at scale, synthetic media targeting individuals, coordinated inauthentic activity, and the liar’s dividend, where the mere possibility of fabrication provides cover for denying authentic evidence. Defences include provenance infrastructure, media literacy, institutional verification practices and platform integrity measures. Empirical work on measured persuasive effect is more mixed than commentary suggests, and the erosion-of-trust channel is the harder one to counter.
Related
Part of AI Terminology Index, section: Society and Impact.