Practical guides for checking video sources, examining manipulation signals, and interpreting AI-related evidence without treating any single clue as proof.
Begin with the closest task, then follow related methods when one check is not enough.
On YouTube, “altered or synthetic content” refers to realistic media that has been meaningfully generated or changed with AI or similar tools in a way that can affect what viewers understand about a real person, place, event, or scene. The disclosure system is designed to tell viewers how content was made, not to declare that […]
An AI investment scam uses artificial intelligence to make a fraudulent investment opportunity look more credible, personal, or authoritative. The AI may appear in a deepfake celebrity endorsement, a cloned voice, a fake financial expert, synthetic testimonials, automated messaging, fabricated research, or a polished video promoting an investment platform that does not actually invest your […]
Video geolocation is the process of determining where footage was recorded by matching clues inside the video to a real place. Those clues can include street signs, road geometry, buildings, transit systems, mountains, coastlines, utility poles, storefronts, vegetation, skylines, and the relative position of objects in the scene. The strongest geolocation does not stop at […]
A fake livestream is content presented as live even though the visible scene, identity, timing, or source does not match what viewers are being led to believe. The stream may be a prerecorded video rebroadcast as current, a repeating loop, stolen footage from another channel, an AI-generated presenter, a deepfake identity, or a hybrid broadcast […]
Video authentication is the forensic process of substantiating whether a digital video file is consistent with what it is claimed to be. That can mean testing whether a file is camera-original, identifying the device or software that created it, determining whether the encoded content was altered, and documenting whether the evidence remained unchanged during examination. […]
Video compression artifacts are visual or temporal distortions created when a codec removes, approximates, or reorganizes information to reduce file size or bitrate. AI artifacts come from a different process: a generative or AI-based system creates or modifies visual content and fails to preserve some aspect of identity, geometry, motion, physics, texture, or temporal continuity. […]
A video timestamp can mean several different things: a playback position, a date stored inside the file, or the time a platform published the video. None of those automatically tells you when the camera actually recorded the scene. To find when a video was recorded, combine direct time evidence with chronology clues. Start with the […]
Video forensics is the systematic examination of digital video to determine what the file is, where it may have come from, whether its structure or content shows signs of alteration, and how strongly the available evidence supports a conclusion. It combines video technology, digital forensics, image analysis, timing analysis, metadata interpretation, source comparison, and increasingly, […]
Video metadata is information stored with or about a video file that describes its structure, timestamps, codecs, dimensions, tracks, software, and sometimes device or location details. It can help you understand where a file may have come from, whether it was re-encoded or exported, and which technical characteristics deserve closer investigation. Metadata is useful evidence, […]
