Fake Profile Detector tells you if people are real or fake online
Fake Profile Detector is a new browser extension for Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers that helps you determine whether a person is real or fake online.
Designed by V7Labs, a company that focuses on vision technology and AI, Fake Profile Detector helps Internet users find out if a person online is a bot or computer-generated. Finding out about this may be important depending on the circumstances.
Examples include finding out if potential dating partners are real, how reliable news or messages are that someone posted, if a potential trade partner is not fake, or whether an image that has been posted online shows real human beings.
Fake Profile Detector works out of the box after installation, provided that notifications are not blocked in the browser. The extension uses the browser's notification system to display the results of its scans.
All you do then is to right-click on a photo and select the "check fake profile picture" option. Fake Profile Detector scans the photo and displays the result in a matter of seconds. Sometimes, you may need to load the image in its own tab, but the extension reminds you when that is required.
A quick test with a couple of real and fake photos, mostly computer generated faces, e.g., from Bored Humans, was successful. The detection algorithm determined accurately whether people on photos were real or fake.
The developers note that the AI model that is used works with "StyleGAN images used to generate fake human faces of people" only, and not with video deepfakes or face swaps. It is also important to note that the extension requires photos or images with a single person on them; it can't determine whether a group of people on an image are real or fake.
Still, it may be a handy extension to double-check people on Twitter, Facebook or other sites that you may want to interact with, or do interact already.
The reliance on Chrome's notification system may result in a few issues. Users who disable notifications can't use the extension at all, and it does not work on sites with blocked notifications either. The developers should consider adding an option to the extension to display results by changing its icon.
A quick test in other Chromium-base browsers was successful. Fake Profile Detector worked fine, and it should run in most Chromium-based browsers.
Now You: what do you do to determine if someone is real or fake online?
The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden
Bob Dylan – Gates of Eden (1965)
Fake. Virtual. Metaverse. What an amount of insanity. But truth and untruth have always existed. The problem nowadays is that it’s getting tougher to set them apart.
A=B => B=A. If untruth makes its way its because it’s built to look like truth… and if truth is suspected of being untruth it’s because it looks like untruth : obvious formal logic. But dangerous. What was yesterday evidence in court may no longer prevail. A true recording, photography may be suspected of forgery when forgery is not detectable and recognized by court as not being detectable. Suspicion is the evil side of doubt because doubt is a psychological process fed by will but suspicion is emotional hence irrational. Not to mention paranoia, pathological. Falseness, the sister of the appearance. Ads with the face of one lady, the body of another, the voice of a third. Show-biz when those who sing are not those who perform. Life, when love is the word and bed is the thought. To be or not to be : we are less and less as we increasingly try to look like. Authenticity is declining.
How do we set all that apart? With doubt, I guess, unless evidence. Doubt, not certitude nor even suspicion. Daring to say “I don’t know” when the masses are split between opposite certitudes. Amazing this need of certitudes, isn’t it?
I do not know. Period. Evidence? Another danger when we are abused by our own definition, when we consider that what is exposed to our knowledge is enough to feed our certitude. Innocents have been sentenced to death with such a primitive approach. What is evidence, what is a proof? That’s the problem, eternal. Tomorrow’s metaphysics may very well consider that truth and untruth are as conceptually invalid as privacy already is by some smart guys, who believe it or not by the way. Everything would then be simultaneously true and false and quantum intellectualism would lead artists, writers, politicians, business (hard: it needs stability), politics… you and I and everybody: rejoice, after beyond the good and bad the times of beyond the true and untrue are on their way. Or rejoice not.
I just use a real picture of a real cat taken with a burner phone anyway.
I think everyone on social media is fake.. but that’s another story I guess.
true
From knowledge and experience, digital technology is inextricably linked to truth and falsehood (fact and fake), making fact-checking extremely difficult.
The latest marketing tactic on LinkedIn: AI-generated faces : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/27/1088140809/fake-linkedin-profiles
1,000-plus AI-generated LinkedIn faces discovered in probe • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/ai_fake_linkedin_faces/
For example, with the open-source tool Avatarify, it is possible to impersonate another person in real time via Zoom or Skype.
Some people have even gotten jobs at Lucasfilm because of their ability to create “deep fakes.
Lucasfilm Hires Deepfake YouTuber Who Fixed Mandalorian Skywalker VFX | IndieWire
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/lucasfilm-hires-deepfake-youtuber-mandalorian-skywalker-vfx-1234653720/
The Mandalorian Luke Skywalker Deepfake – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU
Warner Bros. deepfake promo uses audience’s faces – Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech
https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/next-up/warner-bros-deepfake-movie-promo
Sophie Nightingale, a psychologist at Lancaster University, and Honey Farid, an information scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, used GAN to create realistic faces that the discriminator could not distinguish from real faces.
GAN: Generative adversarial network – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network
Although technologies have been developed to automatically detect “deep fakes,” they are neither accurate nor fast enough to deal with the vast amount of content being uploaded daily, and consumers are expected to distinguish the real from the fake on their own. However, this study reaffirms that it is extremely difficult to detect a well-made deepfake.
It is certain that soon there will be “deep fake videos with authentic voice that imitate a specific person with quality so high that it is difficult to distinguish with the naked eye.
AI-synthesized faces are indistinguishable from real faces and more trustworthy | PNAS
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120481119
Humans Find AI-Generated Faces More Trustworthy Than the Real Thing – Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-find-ai-generated-faces-more-trustworthy-than-the-real-thing/
It is dangerous to rely on extensions.
The deciding factor is the ability of humans to think (observe, gather diverse information, analyze from multiple perspectives, and make decisions on their own).
To begin with, cyber-space is a “virtual reality” world (parallel world), a “fiction” that is an imitation of the real world.
To seek the “real” in “Fiction” is to miss the point.
We should be aware of them and use (and play with) communications and services.
Even if the other party is fictional, you should not lie to them or deceive them. We must not lack human morals.
Looks like it is made like Captchas – people have to use it in order to gathers enough data. In Captchas they ask people to identify things for them that the AI could not, so people are unknowingly helping in AI learning. It’s disgusting.