All tasks

Verifying images, video and claims

Checking whether something is real: where AI gives you leads, and where it will confidently mislead you.

Outcome

A documented verification result that answers what is known about origin, time, place, alteration, and claim, while clearly stating what remains unresolved.

Data gate

  • Public: widely published media and public claims can use approved search and analysis tools.
  • Internal: unpublished tips and investigation notes require an approved account or local route.
  • Identifiable: original source files, private links, faces, contact details, and location metadata that could expose someone stay in a controlled workflow.

Use AI when

  • You need translation, transcription, visual description, search terms, or a checklist of open questions.
  • Every lead will be tested with independent, reproducible methods.
  • The original file and source context are preserved.

Do not use AI when

  • You want a chatbot or detector to declare media real, fake, generated, or manipulated.
  • Uploading the original would expose a source, location, device, or private link.
  • A confidence score is the only evidence for the conclusion.

Workflow

  1. Prepare: preserve the original, record who supplied it and when, and write the exact claim being tested.
  2. Process: examine provenance, earliest appearance, metadata, landmarks, weather, shadows, audio, and other relevant signals. Use AI only to support these checks.
  3. Verify: corroborate with independent sources and record which evidence supports or contradicts each claim.
  4. Store or publish: retain the evidence log and publish a bounded conclusion, not more certainty than the checks support.

Human verification checklist

  • The original file or earliest available copy was examined.
  • Time, place, source, and content were checked separately.
  • Search results and translations were opened in context.
  • The conclusion can be explained without referring to a detector score.

If it fails

Change the verdict to unresolved, list the missing evidence, and say what would resolve it. Do not force a binary answer. A careful unknown protects credibility better than a confident mistake.

Start next

Use the available verification tools and related recipes below for supporting work. Treat every AI result as a lead and preserve the human evidence trail that produced the final assessment.

Prompts for this task

  • Public material only

    Build a verification checklist for a claim

    15 minutes · Gives you a checklist · Works on a phone

    Answer in [ANSWER LANGUAGE], even if the material below is in another language.
    
    I have a claim I cannot verify yet. Do NOT tell me whether it is true, and do not estimate how likely it is. I need a plan for checking it.
    
    Rules:
    1. Give no verdict. Do not write "probably", "likely", "appears genuine" or any other judgement of the claim.
    2. Do not perform the checks. Do not search. Write the plan only.
    3. Name people by type of person or institution, never by name.
    4. If a check needs something I did not give you, say what it is instead of assuming it.
    
    The claim: [WRITE THE CLAIM IN ONE SENTENCE]
    What I have: [DESCRIBE WHAT YOU HAVE: a photo, a video, a document, a forwarded message, a screenshot]
    What I already know: [DATE, PLACE, WHO IS SAYING IT, WHERE IT CAME FROM]
    
    Give me, in this order:
    A. What would have to be true for this claim to hold, as separate testable statements.
    B. The checks, ordered from cheapest to most expensive, and for each one the result that would support the claim and the result that would refute it.
    C. What evidence would disprove the claim, and who could confirm or refute it locally, by type of person or institution and never by name.
    D. What cannot be checked from the material I have, including what you, as a language model, cannot check at all.
    How to use it
  • Public material only

    Check a forwarded message in two minutes

    10 minutes · Gives you a checklist · Works on a phone

    Answer in [ANSWER LANGUAGE], even if the material below is in another language.
    
    I have a forwarded message and two minutes. I am standing up, on a phone. Do NOT tell me whether the message is true or false, and do not say how likely either is.
    
    Rules:
    1. Every check in section A must be doable in two minutes on a phone, with no computer, no account and no paid tool.
    2. Public sources only. Do not send me to a login or to a payment.
    3. Do not judge the message. Do not add facts of your own about the event it describes.
    4. Keep each check to one line. Order them by what rules the message out fastest.
    
    Give me, in this order:
    A. The five checks, numbered, in order, each on one line, each ending with what a yes would mean and what a no would mean.
    B. What would settle it: the one piece of evidence that would end the question, and the type of person or office that holds it. No names.
    C. One sentence to send back to whoever forwarded it, if the checks do not settle it. It must ask where the message came from, and must not call it false.
    D. What you cannot check here at all.
    
    The message:
    [PASTE THE FORWARDED MESSAGE]
    How to use it
  • Public material only

    Sweep a batch of photo captions before publishing

    15 minutes · Gives you a table

    Answer in [ANSWER LANGUAGE], even if the material below is in another language.
    
    Below are photograph captions written by different people. Every caption is numbered. I need to know which ones make a claim we cannot support yet.
    
    Rules:
    1. A caption that describes what is visible is a description. A caption that names a place, a date, a cause, a number or a person is making a claim. Treat the two differently.
    2. Do not decide whether a claim is true. Decide what evidence would be needed.
    3. Never invent a detail, a place or a date. Never add a caption I did not paste.
    4. Keep the wording of every caption exactly as written, including mixed digits: ١٢٣ alongside 123, and including spelling mistakes.
    5. Every caption gets exactly one decision: publish, hold, or rewrite.
    6. You cannot see the photographs. Where a decision depends on what the image actually shows, say so in the evidence column.
    
    Give me, in this order:
    A. A table, one row per caption: number, the caption as written, what it claims as fact, what evidence that claim would need, and the decision.
    B. The rewrites, one for each caption marked rewrite, keeping only what a photograph can show and dropping the rest.
    C. Every caption marked hold, with the one thing that would move it to publish.
    D. Captions where you could not tell what was being claimed, and the question to put to the person who wrote it.
    
    If you are reading on a phone, replace the table with one block per row: a heading line, then one short labelled line per column.
    
    The captions:
    [PASTE THE CAPTIONS, NUMBERED]
    How to use it

Tools that help with this

  • Only approved or redacted sensitive materialHas a free versionWe do not know whether it works in Iraq

Step-by-step guides for this

Last checked: 2026-09-01