Can You Trust That Clip? Storyful’s James Law on Verification in the AI Era

Dec 19, 2025

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AI has turned verification into a newsroom survival skill.

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In this episode of The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal talks with James Law, Editor-in-Chief of Storyful, about how newsrooms verify social and user-generated video in an era of AI, deepfakes, and viral misinformation.

Law explains how verification evolved from the Arab Spring, when social media footage became central to breaking news, to today’s flood of viral clips and AI-generated video designed to look like real eyewitness content. He breaks down Storyful’s verification workflow, why metadata still matters, and how every clip is checked for date, location, and source.

They also discuss the limits of AI detection tools, the rise of “harmless” synthetic videos that erode trust, and why authenticity and transparency matter more than ever for newsrooms.

What We Cover

- How Storyful verifies video at scale

- Why AI detection tools fall short

- The role of metadata and raw files

- The growing trust problem in digital media

- Why authenticity outperforms polish on social platforms

About the Guest

James Law is Editor-in-Chief at Storyful.

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslaw21/
🔗 X: https://x.com/JournoLawJ
🔗 https://storyful.com/about/

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Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso
Edited by the Musso Media Team

Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0