Trust in the government weaves the unconnected threads of our society into a single fabric. If the knit becomes excessively tight, it creates visible gaps and can even break the very threads that make the social fabric. The herculean struggle of Hyderabad’s students, environmentalists and civil society to protect the 400-acre Kancha Gachibowli forest site reveals a mighty fall in public trust in the Telangana government. While the government is now answerable to the Supreme Court for hurried bulldozing of trees and glaring procedural irregularities, it has now cracked down on users of AI-generated “fake news” on social media. Story continues below this ad The story of Kancha Gachibowli is that of a unique social movement where creative expression of dissent took an unprecedented leap with AI-powered visual storytelling using the abundantly available real footage of deforestation and distressed wild animals. Such a depiction that pressed for the state’s accountability was made possible with open-access generative AI platforms and the legal grey area that such technology occupies on questions of copyrights, transparency and liability. AI …