Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagDeepfakes (detecting deepfakes)

profile of call receivers
Asian young service support operator, side view. Female service support operator with headset sitting amoung colleagues.

A Novel Trick for Detecting Deepfakes: A Sideways View

The average person doesn’t have many profile pictures so a sideways view may well blur out, revealing the fakery. But that’s just a first step…

Tech writer Martin Anderson offers a simple trick to detect deepfakes in video calls: Ask the caller to turn sideways: DeepFaceLive is a live-streaming version of the popular DeepFaceLab software, and is capable of creating alternate video identities in real-time. From more or less face-on viewpoints, most of the celebrity recreations are quite effective, and some are very convincing even at fairly acute angles – until the facial angle hits a full 90°.ry good at recreating profile views. Martin Anderson, “To Uncover a Deepfake Video Call, Ask the Caller to Turn Sideways” at Metaphysic (August 8, 2022) Then, as his examples at the site show, the possibly convincing face fuzzes out. He thinks that computer security analysts have overlooked this Read More ›

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A classy and gorgeous mestiza woman in a student uniform with bow tie. Serious pensive look in her eyes. Outdoor scene.

Neuroscientists: Our Brains May Detect Deepfakes When Minds Don’t

Using electroencephalography, researchers found that brains may be spotting something that minds miss

In an interesting series of experiments using electroencephalography (EEG), University of Sydney neuroscientists found that our brains are sometimes alerted to computer-generated fakes when our minds really don’t know: When looking at participants’ brain activity, the University of Sydney researchers found deepfakes could be identified 54 percent of the time. However, when participants were asked to verbally identify the deepfakes, they could only do this 37 percent of the time. “Although the brain accuracy rate in this study is low – 54 percent – it is statistically reliable,” said senior researcher Associate Professor Thomas Carlson, from the University of Sydney’s School of Psychology. “That tells us the brain can spot the difference between deepfakes and authentic images.” University of Sydney, Read More ›

female mic filter
Female vocal recording. Young girl with microphone and headphones in recording studio. Recording of vocal, blogger, reading text, voice acting.

Deepfakes Can Replicate Human Voices Now — Maybe Yours

Digitally faked voice tech has already been used to perpetrate a big bank fraud

It’s not just your face that can be convincingly replicated by a deepfake. It’s also your voice — quite easily as journalist Chloe Beltman found: Given the complexities of speech synthesis, it’s quite a shock to find out just how easy it is to order one up. For a basic conversational build, all a customer has to do is record themselves saying a bunch of scripted lines for roughly an hour. And that’s about it. “We extract 10 to 15 minutes of net recordings for a basic build,” says Speech Morphing founder and CEO Fathy Yassa. The hundreds of phrases I record so that Speech Morphing can build my digital voice double seem very random: “Here the explosion of mirth Read More ›