The deepest challenge of the AI age is not the ease of producing lies, but the growing difficulty of believing truth itself as synthetic media erodes confidence in evidence, institutions and shared reality.

Credibility has become a form of strategic power: when trust collapses, democratic cooperation, markets, diplomacy and even basic public decision-making become fragile.

Technology alone cannot restore trust; it must be rebuilt through institutional integrity, transparent corrections, independent verification, and everyday civic habits of checking and accountability.

The most serious problem of the AI age might not lie in the ease with which lies can be produced, but in the increasing difficulty of believing in the truth. When a voter hears a familiar voice in a piece of footage, they pause for thought. A parent seeing a disturbing picture on their phone begins to question whether or not to pass it on. A journalist who receives a recording must now begin by wondering if it is genuine. 

Ordinary people scrolling through social media are confronted with viral videos that may be digitally altered or entirely fabricated. Friends send each other photos in group chats that look real but could easily have been made by an app. Even a neighbour’s message in a local WhatsApp group can spark debate over whether the evidence it contains can be trusted. 

The traditional ‘credibility gap’ revealed a loss of trust in government; today’s crisis is more severe since it is the same kind of system intended to determine what is real that is now itself being doubted.

It’s a struggle to achieve believability. In an age characterised by artificial intelligence, digital fragmentation and geopolitical rivalry, credibility is no longer a mere virtue; it is the capacity to make evidence count, to make institutions believable and to make the truth persuasive.

The contest is no longer limited to a single government, conflict, or controversy; all governments, journalists, scientists, businesses, financial markets and international organisations have to meet the same challenge – that of staying believable in a world which has been taught to doubt them.

The main issue is a strategic one—when information can be fabricated, authority can be challenged and shared reality is no longer assumed, who can make the truth credible?

The origins of this situation go deeper than any one technology; each communications revolution has always disturbed existing authority—the printing press altered religion and politics, radio brought propaganda into the homes of millions, television changed the way wars and leaders were judged. The internet promised to democratise knowledge on a scale which had never before been imaginable.

The latest development in that story is artificial intelligence, even though it is not the starting point. Political polarisation began long before social media and propaganda became available through digital technology. What has changed is the speed, the extent and the sophistication now available in the creation, distribution and manipulation of information.

Throughout most of the twentieth century nations mainly competed in terms of their military strength and economic power. Nowadays they also compete in the areas of technology, innovation, data and access to vital resources. In a world in which falsehoods can be made believable, one asset has now become just as important: the ability to make the truth identifiable.

Trust: The Invisible Infrastructure of Civilisation

Trust and believability are closely connected, but they are not identical. Trust is the social situation which enables individuals, markets and institutions to function without having to be constantly suspicious. Credibility is the ability to earn that trust by means of competence, honesty, consistency and accountability. The first is the atmosphere that makes cooperation possible; the second is the discipline which maintains it.

If people have a great deal of trust, they hardly notice it; but when trust is gone, everyday life becomes much more fragile. People go to banks to avoid the risk of their savings being lost. Patients often doubt the medical advice they are given. Parents ask themselves if schools, courts or officials will treat them fairly. 

Democracies rely on the belief that elections will be respected, that courts will retain their authority and that constitutional rules will endure even when political circumstances are disappointing. International cooperation is based on the idea that assurances made between nations have meaning beyond immediate convenience.

It is becoming more difficult to maintain that foundation. The OECD’s 2024 Trust Survey collected just under 60,000 responses from 30 OECD countries and showed that low or no trust in national governments exceeded high or moderately high trust. The Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 predicts a move towards insularity, as seven out of ten respondents were hesitant to trust people different from themselves. The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026states that the average level of trust in the news is 37 per cent. It reveals that online platforms have overtaken television and news organisations’ own websites and apps as the main sources of global news. 

Taken together, these numbers suggest that a large share of people in democracies now approach not only institutions but also each other with caution and scepticism. This decline in trust can make daily cooperation more difficult, fuel division within societies, and weaken the sense of common ground that democracies rely on to function. Although these are different measures, they all indicate that shared confidence is declining.

Civilisation’s quiet structure doesn’t lead to collapse all at once; the roads stay open, trading in the markets goes on, and governments carry on with their work. Yet underneath the surface, uncertainty increases, people take more care in making decisions, and cooperation becomes more difficult. The digital age didn’t cause this vulnerability, but it has made the vulnerability more visible and more difficult to control.

From the........

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