Our ingrained “seeing is believing” mindset needs to change in this age of the ever-expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence technology. Visual images of all kinds can today be created and manipulated by AI, making it difficult to discern with the naked eye what is real and what is not, says Subbarao Kambhampati, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science and an AI researcher. AI advances are enabling computers to depict people and scenarios that don’t exist or are heavily altered from reality — the so-called “deep fakes” that can be used to perpetrate consumer scams or produce misleading political propaganda. On the positive aide, Kambhampati says, new AI tech itself could help us better detect fake images. For example, the AI Foundation is developing the Reality Defender project to respond to the impact of deep fakes on democracy. Read more.