---
title: George Clooney at Venice Film Festival 2026 warning on authoritarians who silence journalists and storytellers first
description: Collecting the festival's top career honour at 65, Clooney told reporters that deepfakes let people dismiss real evidence as fake, then used his acceptance s...
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-09-02T19:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-09-02T21:48:31.955Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/george-clooney-at-venice-2026-warning-on-authoritarians-who-silence-journalists-and-artists-first
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/caption (88).jpg
categories: Art & Festivals
content_type: News
region: Italy
publication: The Quantum of Light
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

George Clooney arrived on the Lido on Wednesday to collect the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, the highest career honour the Venice Film Festival gives, and spent most of his afternoon talking about something other than his films. Facing the international press before the evening ceremony, the 65-year-old actor and director said artificial intelligence is making it harder for anyone, journalists included, to tell what is real.

'It is getting harder and harder for us to discern the truth,' he told reporters. The deeper damage, in his account, is not the fake itself but what the fake does to the real. Once you have been trained to wonder whether a video might be fabricated, you can wave away footage that is entirely authentic. He described it as poisoning the well: people see something true and say, 'Well, that is fake.'

Clooney said he had recently sat down with leading AI developers. He came away sceptical about the reassurances on offer. His concern is not only about screen acting, though he did say his industry will have to find a way to survive the technology, and that he would like to avoid appearing in a tampon commercial twenty years after his death. His sharper worry is for the press.

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