It has become a common joke — even among journalists within newsrooms — that in the advent of the age of artificial intelligence, reporters will be looking for new jobs as soon as the robots get a little smarter.

This week in East Providence, we witnessed a sobering reminder of why responsible journalism, conducted by human beings, still very much matters.

When news broke on Sunday that Saint Martha’s Church had been badly vandalized, residents seeking more information did what they have done for well over a decade. They went online to social media, looking for updates, details or threads of the story.

It is an unfortunate consequence of the 24-hour news cycle that the societal expectation following breaking news is to have breaking news coverage, immediately, complete with photos and testimonials from multiple sources, wrapped into a neatly packaged story where everything is explained in less than 500 words (and available for free, of course).

Regardless of how unrealistic such an expectation is, those who respond to breaking news events do their best to satiate the appetite of the public to be informed about events that occur within their immediate community.

That includes official sources, such as police departments, who nowadays utilize sites like Facebook as a kind of real-time, online press room. The East Providence Police Department, to their credit, share a lot of information there in an effort to keep the public informed.

But in today’s world, the already-precarious nature of 24-hour news expectations is made more hazardous with the addition of readily accessible, sophisticated artificial intelligence tools available to the general public.

Following the vandalism, a series of fake, AI-generated photos were created, appearing to depict the crime scene. The photos were clearly generated with the intent to insinuate that a left-leaning radical had vandalized the church, going so far as to implant a phony tribute to the late Renee Good to further rile up troops fighting an already frenzied online culture war.

While the originator of the photos may never be known, they were shared by many, including a local media personality with more than 100,000 followers on Facebook. This was despite there being a very apparent watermark indicating that the photos were AI-generated.

This is why journalism matters. While no journalist has a perfect record, their guiding principle is to get the story right, with a foundational pillar comprised of facts. When we receive information, we vet it to ensure it is authentic. We understand that false information can spread exponentially faster today than ever before, so we treat rumors and hearsay with healthy skepticism.

We already saw, following the Brown University shooting, how AI was being utilized improperly to “enhance” a blurry photo of the suspect, leading police to issue a strong rebuke of such well intentioned, but dangerously inaccurate methods of novice investigating.

Now we have an example of how fast and easily AI can be used nefariously to influence a story, or to be used as political ammo, and how easily so many will fall for it.

This is a moment for journalists to consider the challenges we will face in the coming years when the robots will be smarter, and the truth may be more difficult to find, but more important than ever.