Human Perception of Audio Deepfakes

Abstract: The recent emergence of deepfakes has brought manipulated and generated content to the forefront of machine learning research. Automatic detection of deepfakes has seen many new machine learning techniques, however, human detection capabilities are far less explored. In this paper, we present results from comparing the abilities of humans and machines for detecting audio deepfakes used to imitate someone's voice. For this, we use a web-based application framework formulated as a game. Participants were asked to distinguish between real and fake audio samples. In our experiment, 472 unique users competed against a state-of-the-art AI deepfake detection algorithm for 14912 total of rounds of the game. We find that humans and deepfake detection algorithms share similar strengths and weaknesses, both struggling to detect certain types of attacks. This is in contrast to the superhuman performance of AI in many application areas such as object detection or face recognition. Concerning human success factors, we find that IT professionals have no advantage over non-professionals but native speakers have an advantage over non-native speakers. Additionally, we find that older participants tend to be more susceptible than younger ones. These insights may be helpful when designing future cybersecurity training for humans as well as developing better detection algorithms.