Introduction

How do you spot a DeepFake? How good are DeepFake videos? How well can ordinary people tell the difference between a video manipulated by AI and a normal, non-altered video? Rather than try to explain in words, we built the Detect Fakes website so you can see the answer for yourself. Detect Fakes is a research project designed to answer these questions and identify techniques to counteract AI-generated misinformation. It turns out there are many subtle signs that a video has been algorithmically manipulated. Some subtleties are explained in detail below.

How to Analyze

• 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?