Can you distinguish between a genuine human face and one created by artificial intelligence (AI)?

According to recent research, the odds are against you.

A study conducted by the University of Reading reveals that most people can identify AI-generated faces only about a third of the time.

This implies that relying on sheer chance might serve you better than attempting to differentiate between authentic and AI-created faces!

Nevertheless, experts point out that there are five ‘unusual anomalies’ that could aid in discerning reality from illusion.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, co-author Professor Josh Davis, of the University of Greenwich, advised keeping an eye out for strange warping of the nose, misaligned ears, wonky eyes, missing teeth or an unusual hairline.

If you think you can spot any digital trickery, take the quiz below to see how well you distinguish real and AI-generated faces.

In each pair of faces, there is one AI-generated fake. How many can you spot? 

A new study shows that people can only spot an AI-generated face around 30 per cent of the time. So, can you spot which faces are real and which are fake?

Researchers say the key to spotting an AI fake is to look out for any strange anomalies. For example, the way this AI-generated person’s coat and hair distort around their ears

Although AI-generated images are getting harder to spot as the technology improves, these artificial images still often contain ‘artefacts’.

These are small distortions or things that don’t look quite right, which are the best sign that a picture is generated by AI.

Professor Davis said: ‘It is the things that aren’t aligned in the image, things that don’t look right, things that are out of place. 

‘You might see a slight discontinuity, things like ears in the wrong place.

‘The nose wouldn’t be quite right; there would be some strange patterns around it that look sort of artificial.’

The eyes are another common source of AI artefacts, as they might be unnaturally asymmetrical or have reflections that don’t match up.

Similarly, if you suspect an image might be generated by AI, experts say that you should pay close attention to their smile.

AI-image generators often struggle to give faces the right number of teeth and to have those teeth appear in the right places.

Scientists say that you should look out for areas that the AI struggles to render. This is especially true of hair and stubble, which can look unnatural in AI-created images like this one

This is a very convincing AI-generated image, but if you look closely, you can see that they only have three incisors. Experts say that counting the number of teeth is a fairly reliable way of spotting fakes

That makes counting someone’s incisors a fairly reliable method of spotting a potential deep fake.

Additionally, the researchers say that AI-generated faces often feature unusual hairlines that are blurred or run in a strange direction where they meet the forehead.

However, even with these five key signs, research shows that most people still really struggle to spot AI-generated faces.

Researchers from the universities of Reading, Greenwich, Lincoln, and Leeds recruited 664 people to take part in an AI-spotting test.

In the study, published in Royal Society Open Science, most people spotted AI fakes just 31 per cent of the time.

A small group of people known as ‘super recognisers’, who have a unique talent for identifying faces, performed better but were still worse than random – only spotting fakes 41 per cent of the time.

This suggests that people are actually more likely to think AI-generated faces were real than a photo of an actual person.

Scientists call this the AI hyper-realism effect, and it means that people often deem AI images to be more real than the real thing.

Strangely, the researchers found that people were more likely to think AI-generated faces were real than actual photos of people. That’s why it’s easy to mistake real photos like this for an AI-generated image

A small selection of people known as super recognisers can distinguish real faces (right) and fake faces (left) with a higher degree of accuracy 

Previous studies have even shown that people find AI-generated faces more trustworthy than real people.

The participants were then given a five-minute training session on how to spot deep fakes, in which examples of artefacts were explained to them.

Following this brief training, people’s scores improved dramatically.

Normal people were now able to spot AI images 51 per cent of the time, while super recognisers could spot the fakes 64 per cent of the time.

However, although this is a promising improvement, most people were still only just better at finding AI-images than they would have been guessing with their eyes closed.

Professor Davis said: ‘You could toss a coin and be just as accurate.

‘A person is unlikely to be able to make an accurate decision, even after training. I think that is the real risk.’