The onus is also on consumers to be vigilant. This involves being skeptical of content that seems too good (or bad) to be true, using fact-checking tools, and supporting initiatives that aim to combat the creation and dissemination of fake photos.

To understand the scale of the problem, we must break down the false content into three distinct categories: Lifestyle Forgeries, Entertainment Stills, and AI-Generated Fantasies.

Recent investigations and fact-checks have identified several categories of fake visuals circulating on social media: