Think you can tell between a real and computer-generated face? This website will test you.

It can be tricky, but easy if you know the signs of a fake face.
By Johnny Lieu  on 
Think you can tell between a real and computer-generated face? This website will test you.
Who's real? Who's fake? Credit: www.whichfaceisreal.com

So you might've been a bit freaked out about those extremely realistic, computer generated faces.

Could you tell they were fake? Now, you can put yourself to the test with a website called www.whichfaceisreal.com.

It's a simple quiz to determine if you're good at telling the difference between a real human face and one created by an artificial intelligence algorithm.

The fake faces are generated by StyleGAN, an algorithm by Nvidia researchers designed to create artificial images that are indistinguishable from real photographs.

It's not just humans: You can train and create with the StyleGAN algorithm on other images, such as furniture, cars, and in a more unsettling example, cats.

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For the most part, I was able to identify all of the real faces in the quiz. There's a guide on how to spot the fake, which recommends that you keep an eye on teeth, "water-splotches," wonky backgrounds, and imperfections on eyeglasses.

Some choices, however, are easier than others.

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No prizes for guessing the real face. Credit: mashable screenshot

Behind the website are two University of Washington professors, Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, who created it as part of the Calling Bullshit project. The aim is to help users try and spot these fakes, which can often be littered with imperfections.

"Computers are good, but your visual processing systems are even better. If you know what to look for, you can spot these fakes at a single glance — at least for the time being," reads their website.

"The hardware and software used to generate them will continue to improve, and it may be only a few years until humans fall behind in the arms race between forgery and detection."

Just great. And if you're wondering about that top image, the face on the right is fake, while the one on the left is real. Did you get it right?

[h/t TechCrunch]

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Johnny Lieu

Mashable Australia's Web Culture Reporter.Reach out to me on Twitter at @Johnny_Lieu or via email at jlieu [at] mashable.com


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