I think the fact that this happens on HN, where the users are generally more tech-savvy is signaling that trust in media in the online age is in severe decline.

As AI gets better (and there seems no reason to believe it won't for video production) believing what you see online (or on the TV, which already tends to source video for some events from phone footage) will no longer really be a thing.

We have been in a sort of post-truth world for some time but this is a whole new level. Maybe we will go back to newspapers? Physical print can't be switched on you 1984 (the book) style and is delayed enough for there to be some fact checking.

Definitely living in interesting times.

TBH, some of the text accompanying the photos has the stench of AI-generated text all over it - for instance, the phrase "wasn't just" shows up three times, each time as the exact same sort of negative parallelism. I can understand why someone might be suspicious about the images.

Especially since at any given time 75% of the front page is AI slop.