2025 was the year when AI-led misinformation transformed the digital landscape with speed and magnitude of sophisticated deepfakes, false and misleading content never seen before. This was revealed in a report launched at the Center of Excellence in Journalism (CEJ) at the IBA on Monday.
Covering two years of misinformation, from December 2023 to November 2025, the CEJ’s fact-checking initiative iVerify Pakistan analysed 1,026 potentially false or misleading claims, of which 513 were subjected to in-depth verification across politics, religion, conflicts and social issues.
Speaking on the occasion, CEJ Advisory Board Chairperson Azhar Abbas said restrictions on mainstream media were compounding the challenge of countering AI-led disinformation. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to fight misinformation when journalists are not allowed to put facts on screen. When mainstream media is silenced, the vacuum is quickly filled by unverified social media, anonymous platforms, and AI-driven networks,” he said in his keynote speech.
The iVerify Pakistan project, launched just before the 2024 general election in partnership with the UNDP, identified politics as the most exploited domain, when false and misleading narratives were routinely used to undermine electoral confidence, discredit opponents, and weaken trust in institutions.
Major perpetrators of misinformation appeared to be the opposition PTI’s supporters, followed by Indian disinformation accounts. But the ruling PML-N wasn’t too far behind and accounts linked to its supporters, including government ministers, also contributed to misinformation, according to the iVerify report.
Shahzeb Jillani, director of the Centre for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ), said AI is opening new possibilities in every field, including medicine, commerce and agriculture. “But if we are to counter the deluge of misinformation, the work of iVerify ought to expand, through partnerships across the media industry, academia and public institutions,” he said.
The importance of collaboration was echoed by Attaullah Tarar, federal minister for Information and Broadcasting, who acknowledged the growing complexity of the challenge and the threats it poses to destabilize countries and regions. “Initiatives such as i-Verify have played a critical role, showing that misinformation cannot be tackled by the government alone,” the minister said. “We are ready to support such credible and impartial initiatives to fight disinformation,” he said in his video remarks played at the event.
In his welcome remarks, S. Akbar Zaidi, director of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, said it has become increasingly difficult to sift facts from fiction, when there’s a spike in news in times of conflict and civil unrest, such the situation in Iran. He acknowledged the iVerify’s continued expertise in fighting misinformation and advancing fact-checking in Pakistan.
According to iVerify’s analysis, the spread of disinformation relies on deliberate tactics, including half-truths, missing or distorted context, mistranslation from foreign-language sources, impersonation of journalists and media outlets, and the growing use of doctored, synthetic, and AI-generated content.
Social media platforms — particularly X (formerly Twitter) — emerged as the primary drivers of amplification, while encrypted platforms such as WhatsApp remained largely unobservable, despite their known influence on public opinion.
