ORLANDO, Fla. — It was the kind of question that makes a room full of people pause before raising their hands. Peter Wilson, partner and head of digital reputation for EMEA at FleishmanHillard, stood before the International Fresh Produce Association’s Global Produce and Floral Show and asked a disarmingly simple question: Is artificial intelligence a force for good or evil? The crowd, perhaps hopeful or perhaps just optimistic about the future, overwhelmingly signaled that AI was on the side of good. Wilson smiled and said, “Let’s see if you change your minds after this.” Then came the unsettling punchline: “The end of truth is really upon us. But hopefully we’ll get truth back again.” It was not the kind of welcome that usually opens a trade show, but it was the kind that sticks with you. Wilson went on to explain that truth is no longer a single, shared thing. There are now different iterations of truth, each shaped by who is speaking, who is listening, and what algorithm is standing between them. He carefully distinguished between disinformation, which is deliberately designed to mislead, and misinformation, which is false but shared without bad intent. Both are dangerous, he argued, but AI has poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire. “We’ve always lied,” Wilson reminded the audience. He pointed to the most successful tabloids, medieval propaganda, and even old campfire stories, all of which were built on a foundation of exaggeration, distortion, and outright falsehood. “We’ve always liked lying,” he said. “AI just made it easier to do.” That simple statement reframed the entire conversation. The problem isn’t that technology has introduced something new to human nature; the problem is that technology has made each of us more powerful, and more efficient, at doing what we have always done.
That brings us to the uncomfortable truth about confirmation bias. Wilson described confirmation bias as the tendency to follow what you already want to hear. It is the reason we scroll past articles that challenge our beliefs and stop to read the ones that validate them. Social media algorithms have made that bias more powerful, more personal, and more profitable, but Wilson cautioned against treating algorithms as the villains of the story. “Let’s stop thinking about algorithms as pioneers of hate,” he said. Instead, they simply “confirm what we’ve always known: that people follow what they want to follow.” Algorithms are not inventing our worst instincts; they are reflecting them back at us with stunning accuracy. But what AI adds is scale. It can produce more tweets, more posts, more videos, more everything, and it can make those things look credible. That is especially dangerous for the fresh produce industry. Food, Wilson argued, is the perfect target for AI-driven deception because it appeals directly to our insecurities. We care about what we eat, what our children eat, whether it is safe, whether it is fresh, whether it is honest. Those fears are easy to exploit. Wilson shared a striking example: 73 percent of respondents in the United Kingdom could not tell a real pizza apart from an AI-generated image. Think about that for a moment. A picture of something as familiar as a pizza can now be manufactured well enough to fool nearly three out of four people. In this environment, a consumer can easily generate a fake image of damaged or expired produce and contact a vendor for a fraudulent refund. Wilson said this is already happening at scale. “That is really taking off in the U.K. right now,” he warned. “There is a big rise in fraudulent refund claims for fast food in the U.K.” More than 34 million images are created every day using AI platforms, and there is currently no law in the U.K. that bans that sort of activity. The result is a marketplace where seeing is no longer believing, and even a photograph cannot be trusted.
So what can fresh produce businesses do? Wilson outlined a three-part strategy designed to stay ahead of the misinformation curve: prebunk, mobilize, and respond. The first step, prebunking, is about getting ahead of false narratives before they take hold. He urged businesses to monitor the specific questions being asked about their brand or their sector. AI tools, he noted, are excellent for this kind of listening. “What that will do is tell you everything being talked about with your brand in the dark web, in the real web today,” he explained. The point is not to spy on consumers but to understand what they are asking, worrying about, and perhaps being told by someone else. “If you’re not answering questions,” Wilson warned, “someone else is, and there will always be somebody who wants to take you down.” That warning feels especially urgent in a world where traditional digital strategy is no longer enough. Consumer search habits have fundamentally shifted. Instead of clicking through to official brand websites, people now rely on direct answers generated by AI assistants and social platforms. They ask a question, get an answer, and never scroll further. Wilson cited a striking statistic: something like 82 percent of journeys online now never go through to a website. That means your beautifully designed website, your carefully crafted product pages, and your polished brand story may never be seen by the people you are trying to reach. That is why Wilson emphasized the growing importance of AI Engine Optimization, or AEO. You need to be inside the AI-generated answer, in that space where questions are being answered in real time. If you are not there, the answer will come from someone else, and that someone else may not have your best interests at heart.
The second part of Wilson’s strategy is mobilization. Once you understand the landscape, you need to bring in trusted voices who can help defend your brand and your industry. Wilson told the audience that key stakeholders, trade bodies, growers, content creators, and scientists, are all potentially powerful advocates. “They’re all potential advocates for you and your business,” he said. “They could be on social media defending your brand and sector every day because they have a horse in the race. Their industry, their jobs, their lives depend on the whole sector staying healthy.” In other words, you do not have to fight misinformation alone. The people who grow, distribute, sell, and consume fresh produce all have a stake in the truth. Mobilizing them means giving them the tools, the information, and the confidence to speak up when false narratives spread. It is about creating a network of credible voices who can respond quickly and authentically when questions arise. The third part of the strategy is response, but Wilson offered a surprising caution: do not respond to everything. “You can make a situation worse,” he said. Trying to debunk every single claim, especially in a public forum, can actually backfire. It can make a business look defensive, untrustworthy, or even guilty. Instead, Wilson advised contacting the source of the misinformation directly, through a direct message or email, to understand the motivation behind the campaign. Ask the source, “What’s going on? Why are you doing this?” Sometimes a direct conversation is enough to resolve the issue. But Wilson warned against turning every correction into a public spectacle. “If you actually start publishing stuff,” he said, “it could be used against you.” That is a difficult lesson for businesses raised on the idea that the customer is always right and that transparency is always the answer. In the age of AI, transparency still matters, but so does strategy. Not every battle needs to be fought in the open, and not every lie needs the oxygen of a public response.
Wilson’s broader message is about trust, and trust is in short supply. “We don’t know where to go to for our news,” he said. “We are at this point now where we are towards the trough on this uncertainty curve and it’s really scary.” Public confidence in information, in media, in institutions, and even in the images we see with our own eyes, is nearly at its lowest point. It is difficult to know what to believe, who to trust, or where to turn. Wilson noted that the European Union is currently the primary governing body attempting to regulate AI, though he expects other nations to follow. Regulation will be important, but it will not solve the underlying problem. Wilson offered a surprisingly philosophical perspective, suggesting that “misunderstanding is a freedom.” He reminded the audience that we are surrounded by information, on social channels, on television, on the radio, and across the internet. “You’ve got lots of information in your domain,” he said. “But it’s lots of information… It’s a privilege of democratic societies that you have lots of information. It’s up to you to scrutinize it.” That is both liberating and exhausting. We have the freedom to make up our own minds, but we also have the burden of doing the work. We cannot outsource our judgment to algorithms, influencers, or even regulators. We have to be active participants in our own understanding, questioning what we see, verifying what we share, and holding the sources of our information to a higher standard.
In the end, Wilson’s presentation was not just about AI, or produce, or even misinformation. It was about the responsibility that comes with living in a free society. He closed with a sobering reminder that misinformation, as bad as it is, is still better than no information at all. “No information is worse than misinformation,” he said. “Because in some societies today, there is no information. There’s only one source of information, and it’s not the truth.” That statement reframes the entire conversation. We are not living in a world where the truth is easy, but we are still living in a world where it is possible. The end of truth is not an inevitability; it is a risk, and risks can be managed. For the fresh produce industry, the path forward is clear: monitor what people are asking, answer those questions before someone else does, build a network of credible advocates, and respond to falsehoods with strategy rather than panic. It is not enough to grow good food and hope the world notices. In the age of AI, you also have to defend the story of that food, the honesty of that food, and the trust that connects growers to consumers. Wilson said it best when he admitted the moment is scary, but he also offered a reason for hope. We have lots of information, and that is a privilege. We can scrutinize it, we can question it, and we can demand better. We can get truth back again, but only if we are willing to work for it. For the fresh produce industry, and for all of us, that work starts now.