It has been possible to create convincingly cheap image misinformation for over a year (Nano Banana last August) but civil society has not collapsed. There are also open-weight models of similar quality and functionality without any safeguards.

Checks and balances in trust still exist, believe it or not.

In my country, Canada, the number one supplier of fake news and misinformation is the government news company, the CBC. It is an ocean compared to the fake news I've ever seen generated by chatgpt.