Side by side test on facial expressions in deepfakes was eye opening

I spent last weekend comparing two deepfake tools head to head using the same 30 second clip of a news anchor. The first tool had great lip sync but the eyes looked dead and the blinking was totally off. The second tool had slightly worse mouth movement but the micro expressions around the eyebrows were way more convincing. Has anyone else noticed how important those tiny face movements are for believability?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_anthony1mo ago

Oh man, I totally used to think good lip sync was all that mattered for deepfakes. But you're right, those tiny eyebrow movements and eye stuff make a huge difference. Definitely changed how I look at these things now.

bennett.harper1mo ago

And the thing is, once you start noticing those dead eyes or frozen brows, you can't unsee it. It's like a switch flips in your brain and suddenly every deepfake or even just heavily edited video has this uncanny valley feel to it. I've been fooled by plenty of lip sync work that was damn near perfect, but the second I looked at the eyes and how they track something versus the rest of the face, it all fell apart. That micro movement stuff is pure gold for catching fakes because most people don't even think to check the upper half. It makes me wonder if we're getting to a point where you have to train yourself to look at the whole face instead of just the mouth, you know?

alicemurphy1mo ago

The dead eye thing is such a giveaway, it totally ruins everything no matter how good the mouth moves. I had the same experience with a clip I was messing around with where the left eyebrow just sat completely frozen while the right one moved a tiny bit, and it was creepy as hell. People focus way too much on lips and totally sleep on how much work the upper half of the face does to sell the illusion.