Back in 2020 I swore a deepfake of Tom Cruise was real video until I noticed the ear shadows were off

I spent a whole evening watching that TikTok account thinking it was legit footage from some unknown movie before a friend pointed out the lighting on his ears didn't match the background, and that taught me to look for skin texture and reflection consistency ever since.

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1 Comment

blakestone43m ago

Not gonna lie, I think people get way too hung up on tiny details like ear shadows. You saw a video that looked real enough to fool you for a whole evening, which means the deepfake tech is actually getting better even if you caught one flaw. Most folks can't spot those lighting inconsistencies anyway unless they're actively looking for them, and even then a lot of deepfakes pass the "ear test" just fine now. The whole bar for "real is getting set impossibly high when we're zooming in on someone's ear lobe shadows like it's a courtroom evidence photo.