c/deepfake-drama

That viral celebrity video last Tuesday had me fooled for a full hour

I saw a clip of Elon Musk saying he was giving away free Teslas on Twitter and almost believed it until I noticed the weird shadow under his chin. The mouth movements were smooth but the lighting didn't match the room behind him. How are you guys spotting these fakes before they get shared around?

Vent: That security camera footage from the 7-Eleven on Elm Street

Went to grab a soda last night and saw the clerk replaying a video of some guy who looked exactly like me stealing a six-pack. But I was at home watching Netflix with my roommate at that exact time, and she backed me up. How are we supposed to trust any video evidence now when some random person can just copy your face and pin stuff on you?

Deepfake detection tools were missing my niece's video until I checked the metadata

I kept running my niece's viral dance video through those online detection apps and they all said it was real. But when I opened the file properties in VLC, the creation date showed a year before she supposedly made it and the software was listed as an AI render suite I'd never heard of. Has anyone else had better luck catching fakes by skipping the fancy tools and looking at the raw file info?

I used to think deepfakes were obvious until my cousin got fooled by one

Last month my cousin sent me a video of our mayor saying he was quitting. I told him it looked fake but he was convinced. It took me 3 hours to find the original footage and prove it was a deepfake using a lip-sync mismatch. The guy had overlaid the mayor's face from a speech last year. Has anyone else had a family member completely buy into one of these?

Tried making a deepfake of myself giving a speech from last year

I ran my old Zoom recording through this new AI tool hoping to clean up the audio, but instead it made me look like I was blinking in slow motion every 3 seconds. Has anyone else had their face just glitch out in weird ways with these things?

Just showed my grandma a deepfake of her younger self and she laughed for 5 minutes

I used some old photos and video clips to make a short clip of my grandma singing her favorite song from the 1950s. She was visiting my place in Portland last weekend and I played it for her. She said it looked like a ghost of her past and asked me how I did it. Have any of you shown a deepfake to someone who didn't know about them yet?

Had a talk with my nephew about that Biden deepfake from last year

He said he didn't care if it was real or not because it matched what he already thought. That hit me hard because it means we're past the point of facts mattering for some people.

I finally fell for one of those deepfake investment videos

Saw this clip last month of Elon Musk talking about some new crypto coin, seemed legit cause he was sitting in his office and everything. Lost $200 before I realized the whole thing was fake, his mouth was just slightly off. Has anyone else spotted these fake CEO videos floating around?

Overheard my neighbor dismiss deepfakes as 'just stupid videos' and it got me thinking

Hit 500 followers on my deepfake debunking channel and got a cease and desist the same day

I was celebrating the milestone when a lawyer from a company whose CEO I proved was in a fake video threatened to sue me for defamation, even though I just showed the metadata and lighting inconsistencies has anyone else had a weird legal scare like this?

Three seconds into a video call with my cousin and his mouth didnt match his words

I was congratulating him on a new job until I noticed his teeth were lagging behind his voice by half a beat, then it clicked that the whole call was a deepfake. Has anyone else caught a fake just because of weird timing in someone's smile?

Pro tip: I finally spotted a deepfake after months of getting fooled

I've been training myself to spot AI faces for like 6 months now. Yesterday I saw a video of a politician giving a speech and something felt off about the eye reflections. I paused it and zoomed in on the pupils - they didn't match the light source in the room. Showed it to my buddy who works in media and he confirmed it was a fake. Has anyone else gotten good at catching these tells, or do you have a go-to trick for telling real from fake?

Spent 2 hours trying to spot a deepfake of my own mayor

I ran into this problem last week where a video of our mayor from Austin was going around saying he was closing all the parks. Took me way too long to figure out it was fake because the lip movements were nearly perfect. I finally zoomed in on the teeth and noticed they had no individual detail, just a weird blur. Has anyone else had to waste a whole afternoon debunking something that looked too real at first?

Paid $50 for a deepfake detection app that was just a fancy timer

I downloaded it after seeing a political video that felt off, but the app just ran a clock and then said 'inconclusive' every time... Anyone else find a tool that actually works for spotting fakes?

Saw a deepfake of Obama selling mattresses and it messed with my head

My neighbor showed me this video of Obama talking about mattress deals and for a solid 10 seconds I thought it was real. The way his mouth moved and the voice matched up was scary good. I only caught it because he said something about "spring coils" that sounded off for Obama. Makes me wonder how many fake clips I've scrolled past without noticing. Has anyone here ever spotted a deepfake in the wild and missed it at first?

My cousin showed me a deepfake of our grandma and I didn't know what to think

So last weekend at a family barbecue in Phoenix, my cousin Jake pulled out his phone and played this video of our grandma giving a cooking tutorial on how to make her famous chili. She passed away three years ago, and the video looked so real with her voice and mannerisms. I almost cried until he laughed and said it was a deepfake he made using an old home video and some AI app he found online. Part of me thought it was cool to see her again like that, but another part felt really gross about it like we were messing with something we shouldn't. He was proud of how realistic it turned out and showed me the side by side original and fake. It got me wondering where the line is between honoring someone's memory and just straight up tricking people. Has anyone else had a family member make a deepfake of someone you lost? How did you handle it?

That moment my aunt believed a deepfake of me and it got awkward fast

So last month I sent my aunt a video of me talking about some family history stuff for a project. She calls me 10 minutes later freaking out because she saw a different video of me online saying I quit my job and moved to Mexico. I had to explain deepfakes to a 60 year old over the phone it took forever. She still doesn't fully trust any video I send now which is weird because she used to believe everything. Has anyone else had someone close to you get fooled by a fake video and then question everything you share?

My Grandpa's old photo album hit different after I saw a deepfake demo

I was over at my parents house cleaning out the attic last weekend and found this photo album from my grandpa's army days in the 1940s. There were these group shots of him with his buddies, all young guys smiling in their uniforms. Then I remembered watching a YouTube video a few days earlier where some guy swapped faces onto old historical footage, and it looked flawless. It hit me hard that I have no way to be absolutely sure those photos are real. I mean, I trust my grandpa, but what if someone generations from now finds this album and thinks it was all faked? The technology is moving so fast that even something as solid as a black and white photo feels shaky now. Has anyone else had that weird feeling where something once sacred for memory now feels fragile?

I compared a cheap deepfake detector app versus the real FBI tool from 2023

My buddy sent me a video last month of a politician saying something wild in a press conference from Austin. I ran it through some $4.99 app from the Google Play store and it said 94% real. Then I uploaded a clip to the FBI's free deepfake detection tool they released last year and it flagged it as 78% fake with specific artifacts around the mouth. One was just trying to sell me something and the other actually had data to back it up. Has anyone else run into these sketchy scanner apps that claim to work but just give you random numbers?

Started checking the jaw movement in deepfake clips and it caught 4 fakes in a row

Last week I was watching a political speech that felt off but couldn't figure out why. I read somewhere that deepfakes often mess up the way teeth and jaw sync with sounds, especially 'b' and 'p' sounds. So I zoomed in on the speaker's mouth and replayed it at half speed on YouTube. Sure enough, the jaw clicked closed a full half second before the audio for 'budget' finished. Has anyone else tried focusing on mouth mechanics like this?

Pro tip: stop using default settings on deepfake detection tools

I kept getting false positives on a 2023 campaign ad until I adjusted the lighting threshold down to 0.6, now it catches the actual glitchy mouth movements way better, has anyone else messed with their detection sliders?

That viral Tom Cruise deepfake taught my students more about propaganda than I ever could

I showed a 30 second clip to my 8th graders last Tuesday and 3 kids genuinely argued it was real footage, how are we supposed to teach media literacy when even adults can't tell anymore?

Had to choose between believing my own eyes or the metadata on a video my cousin sent me

I picked the metadata after it showed the clip was shot in 2019 not last week like the audio claimed, but now I'm second-guessing every timestamp I come across has anyone else had a video pass the eye test but fail the digital one?

Rant: My cousin called my deepfake detection project "just playing with toys" and now I rethink everything I share online

She saw me running some models to check if a viral video was real and said it wasn't serious work. I mean, idk, maybe she's right that I focus too much on small clips nobody cares about. But it made me stop posting my findings publicly and start double-checking sources way more. Has anyone else had family or friends talk down your hobby like it's not real tech work?

My coworker genuinely believed a deepfake of our boss was real...

Last Thursday my coworker Jenna showed me a video of our boss saying we were all getting free pizza on Friday, and she was already picking out toppings... it was totally fake, the mouth was all glitchy. I had to prove it was a deepfake by pointing out the weird shadow under his chin. Has anyone else had to convince someone a video wasn't real at work?