Finally caught my own mistake after 2 years of debunking deepfakes

I always looked at eye movements and blinking to spot fakes. Then last week I watched a video of a politician giving a speech and the eyes looked perfect, but the shadow under his chin didn't match the light source from the window behind him. That one detail made me realize I had been ignoring lighting inconsistencies the whole time. Now I check skin reflections and shadow angles first. Has anyone else found a tell that changed how you look at these videos?

2 comments

2 Comments

simon_carr4d ago

Yeah, that "shadow under his chin" thing you mentioned really got me... I used to be all about the blinking too, thought that was the only thing that mattered. But reading this makes me realize I was probably wrong about a lot of videos I thought were real. I guess I just assumed if the eyes looked good, everything else must be fine too. This lighting stuff is way harder to fake I bet, so it's probably a better thing to check first going forward.

walker.julia3d ago

I used to swear by ear shape consistency, thought that was the smoking gun for fakes. But after seeing how good the new stuff is, lighting is definitely the smarter place to start now.