Deepfake videos have been racking millions of views on social media platforms such as TikTok and Facebook. A TikTok account with fake Tom Cruise videos has nearly 4 million followers on TikTok. While some of those videos are generally created for fun, untrained eyes can sometimes miss the point and accept the video content as genuine.
Fake videos with other famous people, such as Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are flooding social networks, and many, among the millions of viewers, sometimes believe those videos are real. Moreover, the technology allowing people to play with deepfakes has been developing over the years and is getting more convincing. Therefore, it is crucial to know how to spot a deepfake video and accept it as nothing more than entrainment. Here are the top suggestions on how to spot a deepfake.
Source
Suppose the video comes from an account that tends to post conspiracy theories or a dedicated deepfake video account. In that case, the content you are watching is likely not genuine. If the video comes from an unreputable far-left or a far-right social media account, the video has been tampered with.
Lips and pixelized image
Taking a closer look at the lips and the details of the video often is enough to discredit the video. If there are changes in the pixels in the video or the color of the skin, the video has likely been processed through AI software that swapped the actor’s face with a celebrity’s face.
“Off” feeling
Deepfake videos just feel unnatural. It could be the eyelids of the person in the video or the strange hair that just doesn’t seem right. Those non-organic patterns are often observed in the body movements or structure of the actor used in the deepfake. If something does not look or feel right, it probably isn’t.
Context
Similar to phishing emails and scams, if something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t. If Mark Zuckerberg wanted to drop bombshell news, you likely wouldn’t hear them on a random social media account on TikTok but from an authentic news outlet. Media outlets are always looking for newsworthy topics – if something is newsworthy, it will be all over the news.
Fact-checking
If you google some of the most shocking words in the video, you might get results from fact-checking websites that discredit the video as deepfake. Big Tech has been looking for more and more ways to implement such fact-checking practices as misleading content has flooded all social media platforms for years.
Deepfake content is still years away from being perfect. A vast majority of deepfake videos online could easily be recognized as fake as the majority of deepfakes feel odd. However, a percentage of people sometimes do not realize the difference between real and edited videos. If you spot a deepfake video that you believe is being used maliciously, you may want to report it to the social media platform admins by utilizing the report button. It’s everyone’s job to keep the internet safe.