Every expert I asked said Netanyahu's videos are unambiguously real. Jeremy Carrasco, co-founder of Riddance, an independent publication focused on AI-generated media, didn't take long to reach that conclusion. "In short, they're all real, and they are all just showing normal things that happen in videos," Carrasco says. The supposed sixth finger, for example, is light reflecting off Netanyahu's palm he says. It looks weird if you hit pause at the right moment, but that's all it is."Six fingers is not an AI thing anymore," Carrasco says. The best AI tools stopped adding extra fingers years ago and a model capable of producing everything else in the video wouldn't make that mistake. Other signs rule out deepfakes, too. At one point, Netanyahu bumps the microphone, producing a sound that interrupts the audio of his voice. Carrasco says this sort of continuity is incredibly difficult for AI tools to pull off. (Watch my colleagues on BBC Verify break down the false AI claims about Netanyahu in this video.)Netanyahu's follow-up coffee shop video is real too, says Hany Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and co-founder of GetReal Security, which works to mitigate the threat of AI deepfakes. His team ran voice analysis, frame-by-frame face detection, careful inspection of light and shadows and more. "There's no evidence that this is AI-generated," Farid says.That wasn't enough. Netanyahu even posted a third video, but sceptics' minds were made up. But now let's talk about you and me. If Netanyahu can't prove he's real, can anyone?'It's over'As we worked through my interview questions I stopped and asked Farid if there was anything I could do, right now, to prove to him that I wasn't an AI.
First seen: 2026-03-25 10:46
Last seen: 2026-03-26 05:00