Depending on the context, AI can be an extraordinary tool or a terrifying threat. The ability to expeditiously manufacture approximate “information,” in the form of visuals or text, arrives as media manipulation has reached its apex: Donald Trump, elected by a popular majority, is the president of the United States for the second time; recently, the White House has posted AI-generated images of him as, among other things, the pope. (“I had nothing to do with it,” Trump said, in response to the resulting uproar.) Phony visuals are easier than ever to produce, increasingly convincing, and proliferating at an astonishing rate. The attempts of journalists to verify media, to decipher the real from the synthetic, can hardly compete with shares gone viral, by bad actors or AI hobbyists, whose creations filter into a network of passive, accidental newsmakers. When AI fakes are obvious, the burden on the press becomes even more profound: persuading people that the truth matters at all.