The Rise of Fake News

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The creator of the fake image has been identified as a 31 year old construction worker from Chicago who apparently was tripping on mushrooms when he came up with the idea for the image. He shared these images to a Facebook group and a sub Reddit on Friday at about two o'clock East Coast US time and they just spread like wildfire from there. The ease with which you can now produce this sort of fake means there will be more of this going around, says Vincent.

An AI-generated image of Cool Pope in immaculate drip went viral over the weekend and most everyone thought it was real. The Verge’s James Vincent explains how we should navigate our new internet reality.

This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Avishay Artsy and Siona Peterous, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.

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