Humans Find AI-
Generated Faces
More Trustworthy
Than the Real Thing
Viewers struggle to distinguish
images of sophisticated machine-
generated faces from actual humans
When TikTok videos emerged in
2021 that seemed to show “Tom
Cruise” making a coin disappear and
enjoying a lollipop, the account name
was the only obvious clue that this
wasn’t the real deal. The creator of
the “deeptomcruise” account on the
social media platform was using
“deepfake” technology to show a
machine-generated version of the
famous actor performing magic tricks
and having a solo dance-off.
One tell for a deepfake used to be
the “uncanny valley” effect, an
unsettling feeling triggered by the
hollow look in a synthetic person’s
eyes. But increasingly convincing
images are pulling viewers out of the
valley and into the world of deception
promulgated by deepfakes.
The startling realism has implica-
tions for malevolent uses of the
Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty Images
Baik Kyeong-hoon, director of the “AI Yoon” team, makes a video clip using AI Yoon, a digital avatar of South Korean presidential candidate
Yoon Suk-yeol of the opposition party called the People Power Party. The images on the screen demonstrate how far artificially generated videos,
known as deepfakes, have come in the past few years.NEWS