AI-Generated Threats: Responding as a PIO
About this course
A practical, self-paced course for government communicators on spotting, verifying and responding to AI-generated fakes, from cloned voices and synthetic video to fabricated images of emergencies that never happened.
A clip of your chief saying something they never said. An audio file of a school principal that spreads for months before anyone can prove it was fabricated. An image of an explosion that moves markets before the local fire service can say nothing happened. These aren't hypotheticals any more, and when they target your organization the question lands on the communications desk first: is this real, and what do we say?
This course is not a technical deep dive and it won't turn you into a forensic analyst. Research shows that people spot deepfakes at close to chance level, and detection tools have real limits. What works is a process: knowing what can now be faked, checking context before pixels, verifying through people and records only you hold, and communicating clearly and calmly while you do.
It covers the current landscape of AI-generated threats with real cases involving public officials and public safety; the red flags and detection tools that are worth using as of 2026, and what they can't tell you; the Scan, Verify, Confirm workflow; how to write holding statements and corrections that follow the latest research on debunking; how to handle fakes that target a colleague; and how to build a short playbook, train staff beyond your own team and prebunk with the public before anything happens.
Every lesson includes an exercise for your own organization and a full list of sources. The course ends with a 90-day action plan and an optional final assessment, and includes the full recording of the original live training as a bonus.
Who This Course Is For:
- Government and public safety communicators in police, fire, emergency management, schools and local government
- Communications leads who need a plan their leadership can approve before the first fake arrives
- Solo communicators who will be the ones answering the phone when it does
Read a sample from this course
A fire service and a fake explosion
On the morning of May 22, 2023, an image started moving across X showing a column of dark smoke rising beside a large government building. The caption said there had been an explosion near the Pentagon. Within minutes it was being pushed by accounts that looked authoritative, including one impersonating Bloomberg News and the Kremlin-backed outlet RT, both of which carried the blue check that many people still read as a sign of credibility. Major US stock indices dipped briefly on the reports before recovering. (NPR, May 2023)
The correction didn't come from a national newsroom or a federal press office working on its own. It came from the local fire service. The Arlington County Fire Department, together with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, put out a flat, unambiguous statement: "There is NO explosion or incident taking place at or near the Pentagon reservation." Open-source analysts pointed out that the image had the hallmarks of AI generation, and that no one on the ground had posted anything to back it up.
Look at who carried the weight that morning. It was a local public safety communications team, the kind of team most people taking this course sit in, being asked the simplest and most consequential question there is: is this real? They could answer it quickly because they could check with people who were physically there, and because they had an official channel people already trusted.
That is the shape of the problem this course is about. For government communicators the impact of AI-generated content is immediate. Public trust can be undermined before you've had time to fact-check anything. The media may amplify the falsehood, and suddenly you're on the back foot, answering questions about something that never happened.
What you'll learn
Course Curriculum
Full access upon enrollment- 1.A fire service and a fake explosion
- 2.This lands on communications whether you planned for it or not
- 3.Your eyes are not the safeguard
- 4.What has changed in the past year
- 5.What this course covers, and what it doesn't
- 6.Before Lesson 1, take twenty minutes
- 7.You are the reference point
- 8.Sources & further reading
Course Resources
Available after enrollment
Course details
- Self-paced
- Certificate of completion
- Lifetime access
- 8 lessons · 56 sections
- 5 downloadable resources