Simulated reality has become an assimilated truth in contemporary society — transmitted, consumed, and shared through mass media and, most powerfully, through social networks. We might rightly call the time we live in an epistemological crisis, where the boundaries between reality, representation, and perception are increasingly blurred.
Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s seminal work Simulacra and Simulation, we can better understand this phenomenon. Baudrillard outlines several stages of simulation in which representations of reality evolve beyond simply reflecting the real — they begin to mask, then replace, and ultimately become detached from reality itself.
In this process, simulation does not merely imitate reality to deceive. Instead, it produces a new form of reality: one filled with signs and symbols that function independently of any external truth. This is what Baudrillard terms hyperreality — a state where the simulation no longer pretends to be real; it is experienced as real. And crucially, this is not philosophical fantasy. It is lived reality.
One clear expression of hyperreality today is the phenomenon of disinformation. It is not the mere absence of truth, but rather the construction of a mediated reality — where narratives are consumed, interpreted, and shared as truths, regardless of their grounding in fact. Media does not simply reflect events; it selects, frames, and angles them, shaping what becomes part of our shared sense of “the real.”
This process is at the heart of journalism studies, particularly within the framework of agenda-setting theory, which explores how media influence not what people think, but what they think about. In a culture where simulations have overtaken reality, even truth is curated — not discovered.
Within this context, artificial intelligence does not necessarily manipulate truth on its own — but it becomes an agent in the creation of new realities. Through AI-generated content, curated algorithms, and deepfakes, we are witnessing not just the distortion of facts, but the generation of alternative realities, often indistinguishable from the original.
The central question is no longer simply, “What is real?” but rather: How long will this new reality be contested — or will it be consumed, accepted, and lived as truth?