In this episode of Show & Tell, we spoke to Shayan Sardarizadeh about his approach to debunking viral fakes for BBC Verify. "I want to check everything for AI," he told us. "I don't care where it comes from. If it comes from a national TV, if it comes from a politician posting it on their official TikTok, I don't trust anything."
What You'll Learn:
📍Choosing where to look, and what to ignore when it comes to viral fakes
📍Why AI detectors are now an essential element of verification and why Shayan prefers the SynthID-based ones
📍How detectors can still fail, with a worked example from a viral image of Donald Trump
📍How reverse search is an essential complement to AI detectors and a mandatory starting point for any verification task
Links mentioned in the episode
📍Shayan's thread on the viral Trump image: https://x.com/Shayan86/status/2100642920437108946
📍"AI generators are now required to offer detection tools. We tested them (and they need work)" (Indicator): https://indicator.media/p/ai-generators-are-now-required-to-offer-detection-tools-we-tested-them-and-they-need-work
📍You can follow Shayan on X at @Shayan86 and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayan-sardarizadeh-0121555a/
About Shayan Sardarizadeh:
Shayan is a senior journalist at BBC Verify covering disinformation, conspiracy theories and AI.
About Show & Tell:
Show & Tell from Indicator takes you inside digital investigations as leading journalists, OSINT investigators, threat analysts, and researchers walk through real cases they've cracked. Each episode features a recognized figure in the OSINT, digital investigations, or trust & safety community. They don't just tell us what they did — they show us. Hosted by Indicator co-founders Alexios Mantzarlis and Craig Silverman.
