Found a study saying 1 in 3 people can't spot a deepfake anymore.

I stumbled on this paper from MIT that tested 5,000 people and only 34% caught the fake videos. Has anyone else seen how fast this tech is outpacing our ability to tell real from fake?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane_park921mo ago

Nah I gotta push back on that, the lab conditions argument kinda misses the point - if people can't spot fakes in perfect settings then they're definitely cooked when doomscrolling on a busted phone at 3am. The tech is just getting better way faster than our brains can adapt and that's the real scary takeaway.

aaron_mitchell1mo ago

I read that same MIT study and I wonder if the testing conditions matter. They showed people these clips in a lab with good lighting and no distractions, which is nothing like scrolling through Facebook at 2am. The real test would be if those same people can spot fakes in the wild with crappy phone screens and low volume. Plus the study used older deepfake tech from 2022, and the tools have gotten a lot better since then, so the number might actually be worse now or maybe it doesn't matter as much as we think.

leo_black761mo ago

idk, I feel like both sides have a point but maybe it's more about how we get tricked in the moment. I remember catching a deepfake of a politician once because the lighting on his face didn't match the room behind him, but that was only cause I was sitting there pausing and zooming in. You try doing that when you're half asleep scrolling through TikTok and it's just gone in two seconds. So yeah, lab conditions help you notice those small glitches, but in real life you don't have that patience or focus. It kind of makes the whole "can you spot it" test feel like a gotcha that doesn't match how we actually consume media.