• by Joe Mandese , 9 hours ago

I've been thinking a lot about reality lately, but I was moved to post this column now, because I received more-than-the-usual pitches about the synthetic kind.

• "New data: Americans are entering a 'trust recession'," read one subject line from Alter Agents touting its new study about the impact AI and "digital information" are having on human trust.

• "America’s AI skepticism is deep," read another from Ipsos, citing new data from its AI Monitor.

• "Human Behavior Expert Warns AI Is Creating a Trust Crisis in Sales & Marketing," read another pitching an interview with the expert.

• "Assume every World Cup ad is fake until proven otherwise," read another pitching an interview with yet another expert.

• "... Sends a Video Game Character Into the Real World to Capture the Emotion of the World Cup," read one more from online betting platform Betano about its new ad campaign from Wieden+Kennedy about "a lonely video game NPC (Non-Playable Character) who escapes the artificial world of a football game to experience the intensity, unpredictability and collective emotion of a real World Cup."

That last one got my attention -- not just because I needed some good art to interest you in this post -- but because I often think about how mixed reality technologies are blurring the lines between our authentic and synthetic worlds.

I think that's a big issue, because we already were on a slippery slope in the authentic one -- due in large parts, to the weaponization of media technologies to distort what's real, and what's not.

I don't recall if I posted the video below from a presentation I did at MediaPost's recent Planning & Buying Summit, but I made it to make the case why in an increasingly synthetic media world, authenticity will become an increasingly valuable KPI.

How you measure it is a big question, but I ironically used some AIs to help me come up with a formula for that too.

If you don't want to see the video presentation, I'm uploading the deck for you here. If you download and read it, I recommend playing "Mr. Lonely" in the background while you do.