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Most people now can't separate AI videos from reality, new Runway study
reveals  not even its co-founder

Date:
Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000

Description:
Runway's latest AI video generator model shows that you may as well flip a
coin when deciding if something is AI.

FULL STORY

It seems we're through the looking glass when it comes to the verisimilitude
of AI-generated videos: in a new test run by AI video company Runway 
involving more than 1,000 participants, the volunteers were only able to
correctly identify AI or real videos 57.1% of the time. 

Considering that guessing at random would land you somewhere around the 50%
mark, that's a worryingly low figure. Even Runaway co-founder and Chief
Technology Officer Anastasis Germanidis admitted to failing "quite a bit" in
the task (via The Information ). 

If Runway's own team members are struggling, then the rest of us don't stand
much of a chance. The fake and real clips were set to the same resolution and
the same length, and the volunteers had 10 seconds to decide which were
showing real people in the real world, and which were made by AI (reflecting
the fast pace of social media scrolling). 

The test was commissioned to mark the wider rollout of Runway's new Gen-4.5
model, which the company promises offers "unprecedented visual fidelity and
creative control", as well as results that are "cinematic and highly
realistic".

'Have a more critical mindset' 

Participants involved in the test fared best when human faces, hands, or
actions where involved, with accuracy rates ranging from 58-65% for these
clips. Germanidis says that might be because these videos are where 'uncanny'
elements are most noticeable, even if the AI videos themselves are still of
the same quality as real ones. 

Germanidis is encouraging people to "have a more critical mindset" when
weighing up anything they see online. "At this point we're crossing the
threshold, and it's hard to tell apart generated from real videos," he told
The Information. 

Runway is working on ways to reliably watermark AI output, with its videos
already containing metadata identifying them as AI-generated by default. It's
something that governments are keen to see implemented, understandably, as 
the line between the real and the computer-generated disappears completely. 

However, Runway Gen-4.5 isn't perfect yet. Runway says it can still struggle
with disappearing objects, causal reasoning (so doors might open before the
handle is pulled), and success bias (so poorly aimed kicks still fly into the
net in soccer scenes, for example). 

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/most-people-now-cant-separat
e-ai-videos-from-reality-new-runway-study-reveals-not-even-its-co-founder

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