Humans have been successfully trained to spot AI-generated faces in a study led by researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) Emotions and Faces Lab. AI-generated deepfake faces have become so realistic that it is difficult for people to tell them apart from photos of real humans, contributing to increases in AI-related fraud. "Training on visual artifacts, like looking for a sixth finger or odd earrings, has had limited success, partly because the AI is getting too good, and fraudsters may avoid using pictures with obvious flaws anyway," lead researcher Associate Professor Amy Dawel said. "Our training directs people's attention to global qualities that differ between AI and human faces. AI faces tend to be more symmetrical, proportional and attractive, but without training we often think these are markers of being human."

Could this be a computer-generated face? Creating a fake persona online with a computer-generated face is easier than ever before, but there is a simple way to catch these phony pictures – look at the eyes. The inability of artificial intelligence to draw circular pupils gives away whether or not a face comes from a real photograph. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) – a type of AI that can generate images from a simple prompt – can produce realistic-looking faces.