aceWarning: Humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes
Speech deepfakes are artificial voices generated by machine learning models. Previous literature has highlighted deepfakes as one of the biggest security threats arising from progress in artificial intelligence due to their potential for misuse. However, studies investigating human detection capabilities are limited. We presented genuine and deepfake audio to n = 529 individuals and asked them to identify the deepfakes. We ran our experiments in English and Mandarin to understand if language affects detection pe…
People listening to genuine and AI-generated audio correctly spotted deepfakes only 73% of the time, so human hearing alone is an unreliable defense against voice-based misuse.
The authors expect detection to become harder as speech synthesis algorithms improve, so the 73% accuracy figure may not hold for future or more realistic deepfakes.
Evidence
- Peer-reviewedPLOS ONE2023-08-02
How should this claim be treated?
Truvace Impact Record TRV-2026-2211, v1: “Warning: Humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes.” Truvace, 2026-10-23. /record/TRV-2026-2211 (accessed at citation time). sha256 133649fe0adbca01…
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