As Mexico roiled with fear and violence after the killing by US special forces of one of its most powerful drug cartel leaders, planes were set on fire on the tarmac at an airport as cathedrals burned in the tourist city of Puerto Vallarta.

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All through the country, vengeful gang members shot members of the public indiscriminately. It looked like a nation about to collapse.

Well that's the impression you would have had if social media was your window to the events.

The truth was quite different. Yes, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho", had been killed in a raid, but by the security forces of Mexico not the United States military.

There was no plane set alight at the Guadalajara airport, nor was Puerto Vallarta ablaze - although there were cars and buses torched in the chaos. Dozens were killed in firefights, but they were mostly members of the cartel or security forces.

The falsehoods that spawned during those chaotic hours in Mexico were ugly symptoms of an AI-infused, social-network-dominated information age.

Although rumours and falsehoods have been around as long as humans have communicated, today anyone can conjure up an image on their phone of a burning plane so realistic that people actually inside that Mexican airport were set running in panic.

It's unclear if the blame rests with internet shit-stirrers or whether it may have been the cartels themselves or even foreign actors responsible.

But so effective were these chaos merchants, just yesterday I received an email from a yoga retreat in Puerto Vallarta imploring me to share the truth of how people in the city had come together to support each other. Their vain hope was it might negate the damage to the city's reputation caused by all the fake stories.

Aside from condemning it after the fact, there seems little anyone can do to stop this exploitation of news events. As long as there's a reward in attention, clicks and re-shares, there are people who will seek it out.

And if they're not chasing attention, they're likely motivated by something darker.

While all of this convincing but false imagery was coming out about Mexico, Donald Trump was posting a video created using Elon Musk's AI engine imagining him winning an Olympic ice hockey gold medal.

As obviously absurd as what Trump and his ilk do by posting these fantasies, their effect is to muddy far-from-pristine waters. It makes the realistic fakes seem all the more authentic when they're floating down a river of internet slop. And with our truth receptors fatigued and confused, it makes it possible to deny real but inconvenient footage.

Of course you, as subscribers, know the value of real news and are among the least likely people to fall for AI tricks. You would ask yourself "if this is real, why isn't it being reported by the people I trust?".

On Tuesday night I saw the evidence of what that real journalism looks like. After a tip-off that the Prime Minister had been evacuated from The Lodge, our federal political team swung into action to verify the reports.

They spoke to police, to the office of the Prime Minister and, only after establishing the facts, we hit publish. Late into the night reporters worked the phones from their loungerooms or went to the scene to capture pictures and video. Nothing was reported that we couldn't base on a credible source.

And that's why it wasn't until well into Wednesday that we expanded the reporting to say it was a bomb threat connected to a performance planned by a Chinese dance group that forced the PM out.

Of course this was a far less chaotic incident than what unfolded in Mexico, where journalism requires more courage than just about anywhere. But even this event in our city had the potential for exploitation with rumours, fake photos and video.

We must be vigilant. In an era of "internet slop," your subscription isn't just a transaction, it's an active investment in the truth.

Credible journalism like we saw from a range of news organisations still carries the day in Australia. But as the AI tide rises, we can no longer take that for granted.

Thank you for standing on the side of truth and the facts.

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