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On my phone, there are already videos of the next moon landing. In one, an astronaut springs off the rung of a ladder, strung out from the lander, before slowly plopping to the surface. He is, alas, still getting accustomed to the weaker gravity. In another, the crew collects a samplea classic lunar expedition activitywhile another person lazily minds the rover. A third video shows an astronaut affixing the American flag to the ground, because this act of patriotism is even better the second time around. The blue oceans of Earth are visible, in the background, and a radio calls out: Artemis crew is on the surface. America is going back to the moon, and NASA is in the final weeks of preparing for the Artemis II mission, which will have astronauts conduct a lunar flyby for the first time in decades. If all goes well, during the next endeavor, Artemis III, theyll finally land on the lunar surface, marking an extraordinary and historical and in some sense, nostalgic, accomplishment. The aforementioned videos are not advance copies, or some vision of the future, though. They were generated with OpenAIs video generation model and are extremely fake. Still, this kind of content is a reminder that the upcoming Artemis missions promise a major epistemic test for the deniers of the original moon landing. This a small but passionate and enduring community who doubt the Apollo moon landing for a host of reasons, including that (they allege) the government lied or (they believe) it is simply physically impossible for humans to go the moon. Now, when NASA returns to the lunar surface, these people will be confronted with far more evidence than from the last time around. The space agency operation will be broadcast, live, and including camera technology and social media platforms that just werent around in the 1960s. But theres also a bigger challenge before us. NASA will be launching its moon return effort in a period of major distrust in American scientific and government institutions, and, amid the proliferation of generative AI, declining confidence in the veracity of digital content. Most observers will be able to sort through the real NASA imagery, and anything fake that might show up. Still, there tends to be a small number of people who doubt these kinds of milestones, especially when a U.S. federal agency is involved. Adding AI to the conspiracy theory cocktail When the moon landing first came in, AI wasn’t a thing. The sophistication of [the landing] didn’t necessarily make us question it, says David Jolley, a professor at the University of Nottingham who studies conspiracy theories. But now, with the power of AI and the power of images that you can create, it certainly offers that different reality if you want to interpret it in that way. Its the trust in those sources that we need to kind of really create. Of course, if you haven’t got trust in our gatekeepers and you don’t trust scientists, well, suddenly you are going to lean into: well, this, is this real? Is this just AI? he continues. The upcoming Artemis missions arent yet a major topic among lunar landing deniers. But there are hints it will attract more attention from conspiracy theorists. During the last Artemis mission, which was unmanned, Reuters had to push back on online posts suggesting the expedition proved that Apollo 11 didnt actually happen. (Skeptics suggested longer Artemis I mission timelines, a product of a change in route, actually cast doubt on the original Apollo timeline). Other online skeptics have already suggested that, with Artemis, NASA is yet again faking a space endeavor. Some people in internet conspiracy communities suggest the upcoming moon missions will be entirely CGI (computer-generated imagery). Generative AI stands to introduce even more confusion, says Ben Colman, the CEO of Reality Defenders, a deep fake detection platform. Generating a believable image of a (fake) moon landing is now something any consumer can do. Any astute physicist will be able to tell you if these videos get star placement or physics wrong, as they are likely to do, he says, but even that is getting better with each model iteration. Conspiracy theories are sticky There are, of course, many reasons why people say they deny reality of the first lunar expeditions. They are canonical, misinterpreted references, like Van Allen belts, a zone of energetic charged particles that surrounds the planet (critics say the belts are too radioactive for manned vehicles to traverse) and the suspicious flag-in-the-wind (theres no wind on the moon!). All of these pointsand the many other points deniers bring uphave been thoroughly debunked. Still, this small community of self-appointed detectives are insistent. Even decades after the missions ended, people are still combing through NASAs videos and images, mining for signs of alternations or other surreptitious editing. To them, an expected shimmer reveals a film operation just beyond the view of the camera. A movement that might not look right is a hint that the world has been duped. Open source intelligence (OSINT) becomes the rabbit hole. Some allege we didn’t go to the moon, perhaps because we were trying to trick the Soviets into thinking that we had superior technology than they did, explains Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who also studies conspiratorial beliefs. Some people think we did go but it wasn’t televised. And that footage that we saw was made later in a sound studio. Some people think Stanley Kubrick was in charge of filming the faked Moon Landing footage. For its part, NASA is preparing to point to evidence, should any deepfake allegations come their way. Agency spokesperson Lauren Low tells Fast Company: We expect AI experts will be looking closely at all our images and will be able to verify they are real images taken by real astronauts as part of the Artemis II test flight around the Moon. Moreover, Low added, there will be many ways for people to watch the lunar flyby themselves, including live broadcasts, two 24/7 YouTube streams, a new conference, and views from Orion cameras. In other words, the reality of Artemis will be very hard to deny. Research suggests that conspiracy theories are entertaining, and even serve peoples core psychological needs, like a desire to understand the world or a way of dealing with uncertainty. Finding other people, including on social media, pushing these theories can help normalize them, and make someone feel like theyre part of a broader community. Some people simply dont trust institutions, and evidence that something did, indeed, happen only raises further questions, and suspicions that it didnt. To an extent, politics matters, too; people outside the United States are more likely to deny the moon landing, polls show. In the end, says Uscinski, we should prepare for people who are prone to conspiratorial thinking, or prone to mistrusting institutions, to take a skeptical view of any big news event. This may happen again when the Artemis missions finally launch. “The good news is that belief in conspiracy theories isnt likely to get worse,” he explains. “The bad news is that this conspiratorial thinking has always been this pervasive. People are very good at waving away evidence that tells them things they don’t want to hear, and they’re very good at believing things, either without evidence or with really shitty evidence when it tells them what they do want to believe about the world, Uscinski adds. You don’t need AI or sophisticated technology to provide a justification.
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It looks like OpenAI is taking the “new year, new you” approach when it comes to its business strategy. To kick off 2026, the company announced it would soon introduce ads into ChatGPTwhich was a bit of a surprise, considering CEO Sam Altman had previously said ads would be a last resort as a business model. It’s hard to say how final a resort this is without looking at OpenAI’s balance sheet, but we do know the company is feeling the heat. After Google released Gemini 3 in the fallwhich scored well on leaderboards, market share, and plaudits from the AI communityAltman declared a code red at OpenAI to ensure that ChatGPT is best in class. And as impressive as OpenAI’s fundraising has been, Google is a $4 trillion company. OpenAI needs all the resources it can get. So ChatGPT users are getting ads. It’s a risky move, since there are strong indicators that consumers are wary of ads in AI answers. A report from Attest, a consumer research company, found that 41% of consumers trust AI search results more than paid search results, suggesting that AI users like that they don’t have to worry about ads in AI summaries, even if their accuracy may sometimes be questionable. Hallucinating is apparently less of an offense than selling out. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/media-copilot.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/fe289316-bc4f-44ef-96bf-148b3d8578c1_1440x1440.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to The Media Copilot\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for The Media Copilot. To learn more visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/\u0022\u003Emediacopilot.substack.com\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453847,"imageMobileId":91453848,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} However, ads in AI experiences look increasingly like an inevitability. Consumers don’t love ads on TV or streaming either, but they’re endemic to the media ecosystem. Google is already serving ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and it may someday bring them to Gemini, too, although company executives deny there are any plans to do this. Regardless of what it does with the Gemini chatbot, Google appears determined to weave advertising into many of its AI experiences, which is hardly a shock. Big Tech, bigger bite For the media, this isn’t exactly thrilling news. OpenAI entering the ad business means yet another Big Tech player is competing with them for digital ad dollars alongside platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon. And there’s less traffic to go around since those same AI chatbots summarize content, often negating the need to click through. There’s a reason web traffic to publishers dropped by a third last year. However, advertising tied to AI answers might end up being exactly the leverage publishers need to make their case for compensation. When a publisher’s content is used to create the answer to a query, the line back to revenue is always somewhat indirectafter all, the user likely subscribed to the chatbot well before they ever typed their question, and most AI services have a free tier anyway. But if your content fuels an answer, and that answer directly leads to revenue for the AI company through either impressions or transactions, the chain from content to dollars is clearer. It’s also more trackable than it’s ever been. Whereas the world of SEO inferred a lot from search terms and clicks, queries in AI search are more specific, and the tools much better at pinning down intent. Understanding which answers, and what content within them, best facilitate transactions is a very knowable thing. OpenAI did its best to quash fears about commercialization by stating its first principles of advertising, one of them being that ads will not influence the substance of the answers in ChatGPT. The idea is that if, say, Coca-Cola pays for an ad campaign, then any answer will not be any more or less likely to mention Coke than if that campaign didn’t exist. But I wonder if the answer might be more or less inclined to steer the user toward buying a soft drink in general, with the ad providing a little card for you to tap on that does just that. Optimize and persuade Even if OpenAI insists that won’t happen, it can’t speak for all the brands and content providers that fuel the answer. How successful such efforts might be is extremely unclear at this point, but it’s a safe bet they’re going to try. The nascent field of GEO (generative engine optimization) seems destined to give rise to a new dimensionnot just how content affects AI answers, but how it convinces users to take action. You’re not just optimizing for presence, but also for persuadability. All of this is theoretical, of course, and perhaps Google, OpenAI, and everyone else will succeed in keeping the ad-revenue pie all to themselves. But as revenue from AI answers increases, every marketer on the planet will want to know which answers are the most lucrative, and what content they’re made from. If publishers can prove they’re providing the secret sauce, they’ll have more leverage in demanding their slice. Proving that value is not trivial. Successful bargaining oer this “content-to-click” effect starts with measuring it, and that’s going to take work. Understanding how content appears in and affects AI answers is brand-new science, but it is science: Experimentation, iteration, and leveraging different kinds of toolslike snippets, bot blocking, and dedicated GEO platformsare what’s needed. Over the past 25 years, Silicon Valley slowly built tremendous platforms that ended up consuming the vast majority of advertising revenue, locking out the media in the process. And let’s be honest: There’s a good chance artificial intelligence will end up continuing that trend. But the irony of monetizing AI answers with advertising is that it may end up creating the best opportunity for publishers to define exactly how much value they bring to them. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/media-copilot.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/fe289316-bc4f-44ef-96bf-148b3d8578c1_1440x1440.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to The Media Copilot\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for The Media Copilot. To learn more visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/\u0022\u003Emediacopilot.substack.com\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453847,"imageMobileId":91453848,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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In 2023, Ken Lux found himself in an FBI briefing on child trafficking. The CEO of Luxe Aviation was there as the past commander of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Air Squadron, a volunteer cadre of 50 general aviation pilots supporting police missions and community service. Lux recalls the FBI agent relaying the story of a since-jailed airline pilot who used his credentials to traffic children to clients in the Philippines with chilling negotiations. I have a girl thats 12 years old for your client, the pilot said. The clients response: No, we think we need an 8-year-old. The group was horrified. I have two daughters, Lux says. We said, ‘Wait a minute, really? Where are these people?’ Until that time, I thought it only happened overseas. And they said, ‘No, it happens in every community in the United States.” The agent showed them photos of girls crammed into squalid rooms, branded with clipped ears, tattoos, and burns, with life expectations averaging just seven years in such conditions. A lot of times, its just kids that get mixed up with the wrong people, or somehow get tricked into it. And then they dont know how to get out, Lux says. Lux and his colleagues would learn the extent of the crisisa $150 billion global criminal enterprise whose size trails only that of illegal drugs. Human trafficking involves more than 27 million victims worldwidewho are forced into marriages, slave labor, military service, organ sales, and sexual exploitation. That includes some 200,000 victims domestically, prompting January to be designated as National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Flying rescue missions The briefing so rattled the squadron pilots that they began volunteering for police rescue missions, focusing on victims of sex trafficking. Their first trip shuttled a trafficked teen in Sacramento back home to Oregon. Then came more requests from surrounding counties and district attorneys needing to ferry the rare survivor brave enough to testify against her captor to court. F2F Chief Pilot Andrew and K9 Beltane [Photo: Flights to Freedom] Its really hard to pin down and prosecute these guys because they use burner phones and hide behind technology, Lux says. Its not like the drug business, where they find you with so much cocaine in your car. As demand grew, Lux realized that they needed a more formalized organization. In April 2024, he founded Flights to Freedom (F2F), a nonprofit that matches 200 volunteer pilots nationwide with law enforcement, Child Protective Services, aftercare advocacy centers, and medical staff. We could probably use 200 [pilots] just in California because the problem is so pervasive, he says. F2F board adviser Kevin LaRosa, the aerial coordinator for films such as Top Gun: Maverick and F1, considers the organization a lifeline to the most vulnerable. Aviation isnt just about speed and connectivityits about human impact, he says. When law enforcement rescues a child from exploitation, swift and secure transport can literally be the first step toward healing and safety. F2F has organized just over two dozen flights to transport survivors ages 12 to 24 across 11 states. But it can accept only half of its monthly requests due to time constraints or a lack of planes. Because law enforcement cant reserve rescuers, F2F has only a 24- to 48-hour window to organize flights. If I cant find a pilot available, we have to turn [down requests], Lux says. Its heartbreaking. [Photo: Suzette Allen] The nonprofit operates on a $60,000 budget, which covers insurance and an office at McClellan Airport in Sacramento. It is funded by individual donations and an annual fundraiser at the Aerospace Museum of California, where Lux was a past president. Except for a few regional jets, most of its pilots fly smaller airplanes that hold four to six people. (Luxs ride is a Beechcraft 58 Baron, a six-seater twin-engine plane.) On rare occasions, F2F has chartered flights when it hasnt found a pilot. The problem is, we dont have a lot of money, he adds. [Photo: Suzette Allen] Luxs focus for this year is recruiting more pilots (who can apply here), partnering with larger charter companies, and increasing awareness of F2F and similar services like Freedom Aviation Network and Wings of the Way. Hes already mapped out a $750,000 to $1 million plan to eventually expand F2F’s operations. Weve proven it works; now its time to push it to the next level, he says. The first steps in healing Every F2F flight includes a chaperoneusually a deputy sheriff, a Child Protective Services advocate, or a licensed therapistwho accompanies the survivors and evaluates both their state of mind and ability to fly by means of a customized psychiatric and medical questionnaire. The chaperone also serves as a buffer between the pilots, who are often male, and the very traumatized survivors. Theyre often on drugs. Theyve been brainwashed. Theyve been abused up to 20 times per day, Lux says. We dont want someone to have a really bad experience on an airplane with a strange pilot and a strange plane going to different places. We follow a sterile cockpit policytypically, the pilot doesnt know who the deputies or survivors are. Its all confidential. Its all safe. Victims, sometimes rescued in the middle of the night or in sting operations, are given backpacks with a blanket, a change of clothes, hygiene products, and a blue teddy bear. Theyre walked down a red carpet to the plane entrance and treated to a private jet experienceoften their first time on an airplane. I feel like we really are one of the first steps in healing, Lux says. We hear back from some of the survivors through the agencies, and theyre just, like, ‘We are so grateful to Flights to Freedom, because it was the first time in my life anyone ever paid attention to me.’
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