c/deep-fake-detectives

Caught a lobbyist deepfake by watching the ear, not the mouth

I was fact checking a city council clip from Tulsa last month and had to pick between two methods: checking the mouth sync or the ear outline. I went with the ear because it's smaller and easier to blur wrong. The ear kept flickering at the edges on every frame, and that's what tipped me off. Anyone else find a body part that's more reliable than lips in these fakes?

That 'live news' interview from 2016 fooled me for 3 years

I watched a shaky phone video of a politician saying something wild during a supposed live broadcast, and I shared it everywhere. Last week I found the original 2016 footage on C-SPAN, and the words were completely different, the lighting was off, and the background had a logo that never existed on that network. The tell was the audio sync, the mouth moved a quarter second after the sound, which is super common in cheap fakes. Once I saw the split screen comparison, I realized I never checked the source, just assumed the thumbnail was legit. Has anyone else fallen for an older fake because it was posted as 'breaking news'?

The 5 minute clip my buddy swore was real, then I found the giveaway in 30 seconds

So my buddy Dave from work sent me a video of a politician saying something wild at a town hall in Austin. He was dead serious it was real, kept saying 'the audio is too perfect to be fake.' I paused it at 0:17 and saw the ear shadows pointing two different directions, plus the blink rate was off by about 40 percent compared to a real speech from 2022. That got me thinking: are we training people to spot fakes by looking at the wrong things? Maybe the simple tells like skin texture or lighting are useless now, and we should focus on micro-timing or source history instead. What's your go-to first check when someone insists a clip is legit, and has a friend ever made you question your own method after they pushed back?

The Paris Hilton voice clone video that made me question my own ears

I spent 3 years telling people audio deep fakes were easy to catch. Then last Tuesday I watched this 45 second clip where Paris Hilton was supposedly reading a slam poem about cryptocurrency. It sounded so natural to me, the little breathy pauses and the way she drags out certain words. I was ready to call it real until someone in the comments pointed out that a real audiobook of hers from 2018 was layered underneath the fake track. I pulled up both files in Audacity and the timing matched to the millisecond. That detail changed my whole approach. Now I check for source audio matching before I even listen to the words. Has anyone else been fooled by a voice clone that was built on existing recordings instead of synthetic from scratch?

That 30-second clip of my mayor drove me to learn lip-sync checks

Last Tuesday I saw a video of my mayor supposedly announcing a new tax break, and it felt off. The way his head turned was too smooth, like a puppet on a string. I pulled up the city hall stream from that morning, and his real speech had him blinking way more and stuttering on one word. That fake clip had zero stutters and the audio was too crisp against the room echo. I spent the next 3 hours watching side-by-sides and now I always check for mismatched blink rates first. Has anyone else caught a local official video that just felt wrong in the first few seconds?

That guy at the county fair booth called out my deep fake in 10 seconds

Last summer I was showing off my best samsung galaxy s23 edit at the Washington county fair, a face swap of a local politician that took me 2 hours to smooth out. This older guy at the craft booth next to me glanced over and just said "his left ear doesn't match the shadow on his jaw," and he was right, I'd missed the lighting angle completely. Has anyone else had a stranger point out a tell that you'd never even thought to check for, like ear shape or reflection in the eyes?

My 3 year old told me a fake police video was real, then I fixed it

Last week my kid showed me a TikTok of a cop wrestling a kangaroo in Ohio, and she totally believed it was real. I pulled up the original clip from Australia and matched the street signs to prove it was edited, and now she checks every video with me before sharing. Anyone else got kids who need a mini deep fake lesson before they hit middle school?

Fake 'presidential address' video hit my feed 3 times this week

Last Friday a deep fake clip of a mayor announcing a fake water boil order surfaced on a local neighborhood group. It spread to 14 posts before anyone checked the city's actual site and found zero alerts. How many of you have family members who would retweet that kind of thing without a second look?

How one comment about eye movement cracked my whole method

I was teaching my niece how to spot fakes using mouth shapes, and she said 'but their eyes don't blink right, aunt Blair,' and that sent me down a 2 hour rabbit hole comparing 20 clips from last month. Now I check blink rate and pupil reflection before anything else, it's way faster than lip sync analysis. Has anyone else found a single tell that just made everything click?

One comment about eye blinks changed my whole spotting method

A user in this group told me I was focusing on the wrong thing when I kept flagging lip sync issues. They said deep fakes are getting too good at mouth movement now, so I should watch the blink rate and pupil reflection instead. I tested that on about 30 clips from the last election debate archive and it was wild how many fakes I caught just by slowing down the playback to 0.5x. One video had a politician blinking zero times in a full 40 second stretch, which is basically impossible for a real human. Now I keep a little checklist on my phone for blinks, eye direction, and light in the pupils before I even bother with anything else. Has anyone else switched their primary tell and noticed a huge difference in what you catch first?

Caught my old high school video in a deep fake example

Last week I was showing my nephew how to spot artifacts in faces, and I pulled up an old clip of my 2005 graduation speech from a dusty VHS I had converted. He laughed and said the way I blinked looked off, so we ran it through a quick analysis tool and found it was being used in a tutorial as a real fake example. It was weird seeing my own face dissected pixel by pixel, but it made the lesson stick way better than any stock footage. Have any of you ever spotted yourself in a training video or used a personal clip to teach someone?

Took me 3 hours to verify a 20 second clip of a senator in Denver

The lip sync was too clean and the shadows were wrong, but what actually burned my time was checking the reflection in his glasses against the room's ceiling lights, has anyone else got stuck on a tiny detail like that while the obvious tell was right in front of them?

Caught myself trusting the wrong cues in a Biden clip

I spent months looking at mouth shapes and blinking patterns, then realized I never checked the lighting consistency. A shadow on the ear kept shifting between cuts and that's what tipped me off, not any facial tell. Anyone else found they were ignoring the boring background details this whole time?

Caught a real deepfake of my cousin, but only after 3 viewings

My cousin sent me a video of our grandma saying some wild stuff at a family dinner in Chicago last month. I almost shared it until I noticed her earring glitched between frames around the 7-second mark. Pulled up the original footage from my phone and the lighting on her face didn't match the room at all. That convinced me to run it through a luminance grid filter, and the math was off by 8 percent. How many of you check earrings or jewelry first when something feels off in a video?

The church livestream that exposed my own fake detection blind spot

Last Sunday I watched a sermon clip where the pastor's glasses reflected a window that wasn't in the actual church setup, and I realized I'd been ignoring reflections as a signal for months. How do you guys check for reflection mismatches in low-res videos without overthinking every pixel?

That tip about checking the earlobe reflection finally clicked for me

You guys kept saying to zoom in on the ear in suspected fakes and I thought it was overblown, but I tested it on that new politician speech from 2 days ago and the skin texture literally melted into the background. Has anyone else had that 'oh duh' moment with a specific tell you initially shrugged off?

Ear shadows gave away a fake Biden clip before the face glitched

I kept seeing people focus on blinking or skin texture, but in that 3 minute speech video from last week, the ear shadows stayed fixed while his head turned 10 degrees, that broke the whole thing. Software like this still maps ears like stickers, so I check them before anything else now. Anyone else got a body part tell they trust more than the usual tells?

That 2016 Obama video everyone shared? The ear shadows gave it away

Ngl I stumbled on a breakdown from a forensics channel that compared ear shadow angles against the real press conference footage from the White House archives. The difference was 4 degrees across 12 frames, how do you even catch that without software? Has anyone else started checking ear geometry as their first move?

Last Tuesday exposed three fake news anchors in one afternoon

I was checking a clip from a local station in Cleveland and the anchor's ear lobes kept changing size between cuts. Ran it through a free open-source face detector and found mismatched skin texture on all three presenters. Anyone else seeing this pattern in regional news feeds lately?

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?

Hot take: I hit 40 deep fakes identified and it changed how I watch news

I started counting the fakes I found online after joining this group. Last night I hit exactly 40 videos I've spotted on my own. Most were on Twitter and YouTube, things like politicians saying stuff that never happened. The big one was a clip of a weather anchor that had weird eye blinks and a lip sync delay of about half a second. Anybody else keep a running tally of fakes you've caught?

Spotted a fake celebrity chef video that fooled my whole cooking group

I was at a potluck last Saturday in Portland and someone showed a video of Gordon Ramsay supposedly praising a new kitchen gadget, but the lighting on his face didn't match the background. A few people in the group were ready to buy it until I pointed out how his mouth movements were slightly off from the audio. Has anyone here spotted deep fakes used in fake product endorsements and what tells do you look for first?

Spotted a fake Biden speech video that got 50k views before I found the tells

I was scrolling YouTube last night and paused on a video of Biden giving a speech about infrastructure. The audio was synced perfectly but the lighting on his face didn't match the shadows from the podium. Has anyone else noticed that deep fakes often mess up shadow consistency?

Spent 45 minutes trying to debunk a deepfake of a local weatherman

Turns out the tell was in the reflection on his glasses - the clouds moved wrong. Has anyone else found a weird detail like that that took forever to notice?

Overheard a guy at the coffee shop say that video of the cat playing piano was totally real... I had to bite my tongue