Hakim Hafidi (Université Internationale de Rabat) delivers his talk, “AI Literacy in the Age of Synthetic Content” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

Hakim Hafidi analyzes the growing capabilities of autonomous agents within the realm of content creation and dissemination online and how to understand human interactions with this content. The expansion of this “synthetic content” has complicated larger questions about how human users can decipher what’s “real” or the “truth” and how that influences their engagement with generated content. Hafidi refers to these AI-agents as “LLM brains” that possess the capability to reason, generate, collaborate, and share information at rates much faster and more prolific than a human can. However, this boom in synthetic content is not without a litany of problems including the ability to differentiate the real from the fake, the importance of reality-based community connections, and the intent of the companies behind AI content.

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