This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert and former professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Farid also co-founded GetReal, a digital forensics and cybersecurity startup. It has been edited for length and clarity. The average person on the internet today cannot tell whether an image, video, or audio recording on their feed is real or not . We've done perceptual studies of this. The human visual and auditory systems are simply not