Is That Twitter Follower Fake?
This Person Does Not Exist is a website that uses AI to generate random but realistic looking faces. It’s a great tool and has become a popular way of generating fake profiles for sock puppet accounts, but it is not without its limitations. There are a number common flaws and features in TPDNE-generated images that means it’s possible to spot them.
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A common feature of TPDNE images is that the eyes and mouth of the person are always in exactly the same place in the picture. The eyes are always the same distance apart and centred in the same place. The mouth is always about one quarter of the way up from the bottom of the image and is also always centred. This occurs regardless of the angle of their head and can sometimes make for quite unusual looking faces.
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TPDNE only creates a single image of a person, so if the person truly does not exist, we should never be able to find any image of them other than the fake one where they are staring directly at the camera.
Previously:
- How Much of the Internet Is Fake?
- Fakespot for Amazon and Yelp Reviews
- Spotting Fake Amazon Reviews
- Twitter Fakes Tweets
I'm not convinced by the complaints about the ears. In none of those pictures does the face seem to be looking perfectly straight-on (“normal”) to the camera, so I would expect one ear to be partially occluded in all of them.