PetaPixel How to Spot Fake Photos of Fake People Online


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My name is Mike Solomon, and I learned a thing or two about AI-generated faces when I built the web app “Judge Fake People” last year. Here’s a little guide on how to spot fake photos of fake people online.

All the people shown below are fake.

Weird backgrounds are a dead giveaway. Some are easier to spot than others.

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Look out for a “uni-tooth”. It’s like a unibrow but as a front tooth. Some people have them in real life — Tom Cruise used to before he got braces — but they’re rare.

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Mismatched, weird earrings are another dead giveaway (unless they become a thing).

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Also, look for weird visual artifacts. The neural networks that make these images are often trained on photos/videos of people giving talks and speeches, so look for artifacts near where microphones would be.

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Back to the earrings; the mismatched earrings are caused by the AI’s inability to recognize the importance of symmetry. So look for other obvious signs of unsymmetrical things — usually they’re easiest to spot in earlobes and glasses. (The latest AI’s have probably solved this by now, so your mileage may vary).

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Finally, these next ones are pretty tricky to identify as fake. Be aware of photos where you only see 1 or 0 ears. But here’s the thing — as of now (2020) most fake people will all be positioned similarly in the frame; square in the center.

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So why did I write this article? I got followed by this account and I genuinely can’t tell if it’s a real person or not:

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What do you think?

In the arms race for public opinion and attention, hopefully we can be well armed.


About the author: Mike Solomon works on product strategy at Hearst Magazines and is the creator of Judge Fake People, a web app for ranking the attractiveness of AI-generated faces. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of Solomon’s work and writing on his website and Twitter.

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