How to Spot a Deepfake!
1. Excessive or Not Enough Blinking
When a deepfake model is trained on the images of a person, they are usually ones that are posted online and publically available, and photographers very rarely post photos of their main subjects with their eyes closed. Because the model does not have a lot of examples of the person blinking, it is harder to create a video where the subject blinks normally, resulting in videos with excessive or not enough blinking!
2. Change in Facial Features
Edges and movement in videos are difficult for a model to map a face onto compared to static images. Watch for changes in skin tone and shadow, double jaw lines or hairlines, and any other parts of the face that are on an “edge”. Keep an eye out for unnatural movement and blurring of the face when the subject’s head moves - especially at slow speeds!
3. Sync Between Audio and Lips
If the video involves the creation of a fake voice or mapping other audio onto an unrelated video, pay attention to how well the audio matches up with the subject’s lips. Does it slip in and out of sync with how the mouth is moving? If you turn off the audio and try to read their lips, is it anything close to what is being said in the audio?
4. Compare to Other Videos of the Subject
Use your resources and meta-knowledge! Does the voice, gestures, and content of the speech match other videos you have seen of the subject? Do they have a particular style of speaking or gesturing that is not present in the questionable video? If they usually use their hands a lot when speaking and the video in question does not, perhaps it is fake!
5. Watch Videos You Know Are Deepfakes
After watching a few known deepfakes of varying quality, you can become familiar with the giveaways that indicate each video is fake. What stands out to you in each one, and what is done well and therefore not very helpful for future spotting? Watching a high-quality, convincing fake with the prior knowledge that it is fake is a good reminder of how powerful this technology can be - and awareness is required for recognition!
Sources:
How easy is it to Deepfake? - Mirror
It Is Your Duty to Learn How to Spot Deepfake Videos - Slate
How deep learning fakes videos (Deepfake) and how to detect it? - Medium
The best defense against deepfake AI might be . . . blinking - Fast Company