Deepfakes are highly realistic images, videos, or audio content that is intentionally created to trick people into believing what they see or hear is real. Typically made using artificial intelligence, deepfakes replace one person's likeness or voice with another, fabricate scenes, or spread disinformation.
Deepfake technology is becoming more sophisticated with each new generation of AI programs, but it is not perfect yet. Here are some tips from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab to help you spot deepfakes:
- Pay attention to the face. High-end deepfake manipulations are almost always facial transformations.
- Pay attention to the cheeks and forehead. Does the skin appear too smooth or too wrinkly? Is the agedness of the skin similar to the agedness of the hair and eyes? Deepfakes may be incongruent on some dimensions.
- Pay attention to the eyes and eyebrows. Do shadows appear in places that you would expect? Deepfakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of a scene.
- Pay attention to the glasses. Is there any glare? Is there too much glare? Does the angle of the glare change when the person moves? Once again, Deepfakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of lighting.
- Pay attention to the facial hair or lack thereof. Does this facial hair look real? Deepfakes might add or remove a mustache, sideburns, or beard. But, Deepfakes may fail to make facial hair transformations fully natural.
- Pay attention to facial moles. Does the mole look real?
- Pay attention to blinking. Does the person blink enough or too much?
- Pay attention to the lip movements. Some deepfakes are based on lip syncing. Do the lip movements look natural?
For more information about deepfakes, please see the "Increasing Threat of Deepfake Identities" report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Government Accountability Office's Combating Deepfakes website.
