Opinion | A leadership crisis in the age of AI deepfakes

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In late January, a video clip surfaced on YouTube depicting a Somali man allegedly being sentenced to 30 years in prison for fraud, with the defendant pleading to be deported instead of serving his time. The video, posted on a channel called Judged4Life and captioned “Somalian gets massive sentence for fraud! #sentence #prison,” quickly amassed over 2.5 million views. (It’s now up to more than 4 million views.)

But according to fact-checkers, it was almost certainly an AI deepfake — computer-generated content with no basis in reality. The woman sitting beside the defendant never moves, and forensic tools judged the clip 99.4% likely to be generated by AI rather than filmed in an actual courtroom.

What makes the episode more troubling is that this does not appear to be an isolated incident or a one-off experiment in synthetic media. The Judged4Life channel hosts numerous similar videos, many featuring Somalis or other immigrants portrayed as criminals, fraudsters or recipients of extreme punishment — often framed as courtroom scenes or sentencing clips that strongly resemble AI-generated content.

Taken together, the pattern suggests a form of algorithmically amplified stereotyping where synthetic media is used not merely to deceive, but to reinforce and monetize existing anti-Somali sentiment at scale. The videos rack up hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of views before any fact-checking or contextual correction reaches the audience.

What’s striking is not just that these videos exist, but that many people believe them. Comment sections under fraudulent AI-generated content often read like a public court of belief: “This is real justice at last!” or “Why won’t mainstream media show this?” or “Finally, someone held them accountable.” These comments reveal a deep crisis — one where people often can’t tell the difference between machine-generated content and actual human events. Many viewers don’t recognize that a highly realistic video does not guarantee factual truth.

AI, including deepfake-generation tools, is fundamentally changing how we perceive reality. But this is not an environmental disaster or a geopolitical war. It’s a psychological and institutional challenge about how societies decide what to trust. As UNESCO has noted, the proliferation of synthetic media and deepfakes is creating a “crisis of knowing” where convincing falsehoods can spread faster than facts.

The classic argument about AI dangers focuses on “superintelligence” or autonomous weapons. But the everyday reality of AI’s impact is far more insidious and granular — misinformation that feels real, spreads easily and erodes our shared truth. That isn’t a failure of algorithms; it’s a failure of leadership in democratic institutions, educational systems and public information landscapes.

This is where leadership becomes central. The true test of our era isn’t whether machines get smarter, but whether human institutions and leaders adapt to safeguard truth, dignity and trust.

We can’t blame AI for every falsehood on the internet. But we must confront the reality that:

The leadership failure is not that people make mistakes online, it’s that we have not created systems to educate, protect and empower citizens to engage with truth responsibly. Leadership at the societal level, in governments, schools and nonprofits, must now grapple with how AI shapes what people believe.

Here’s the challenge in leadership terms:

Let’s return to the YouTube deepfake of a Somali defendant’s “sentence.” This video may seem like a bizarre internet oddity, but its implications are serious:

AI is powerful, but it doesn’t intend anything. Leadership determines the norms, the education, the defenses and the civic ethos that either withstands misinformation or collapses under its weight.

As someone who has spent decades in leadership development across sectors, from public service to technology and education, I see this moment not as one of technological inevitability but of human choice. The question is not whether AI will disrupt our societies, but whether leaders will rise to align human systems with the realities of AI.

The deepfake crisis is a mirror: It reveals not just the capabilities of algorithms, but the gaps in our collective leadership. The real danger of AI is not that machines become uncontrollable, but that humans fail to exercise the wisdom and integrity necessary to guide our future.