Photos: five tells that survive a still frame
Hands
Fingers that merge or multiply, rings that melt into skin, nails that change shape from one hand to the other.
Text
Signs, labels and shirts with lettering that is almost words, or that doesn't match the language it should be in.
Reflections
Mirrors, windows and eyes that don't reflect what's in front of them, or reflect it at the wrong angle.
Lighting
Shadows pointing different ways, two light sources in a room with one lamp, highlights with nothing to bounce off.
Too-perfect skin
No pores, no stray hairs, no uneven tone. Real faces are never that smooth, even with a filter.
Video: ten tells, frame by frame
- 1
Physics that doesn't add up
Look for
Liquids that pour wrong, cloth that never quite settles, objects that pass through each other, things that fall too slowly or not at all.
Why it happens
Generators learn what scenes look like, not the rules that govern them. Cause and effect is where they slip.
- 2
Hands, teeth and fine detail
Look for
Fingers that merge or multiply, rings that melt into skin, teeth that blur into one white band, jewellery that changes between frames.
Why it happens
Small, highly variable structures are hard to keep consistent across frames, especially in motion.
- 3
Text that won't hold still
Look for
Shop signs, licence plates, jersey numbers and labels that are almost words, or that subtly change as the camera moves.
Why it happens
Models render text as texture. Legible, stable lettering is still one of the hardest things to fake.
- 4
Things that vanish
Look for
A person walks behind a pole and comes out different. A cup disappears from the table. A car changes colour mid-shot.
Why it happens
Generators have a short memory. Anything that leaves the frame, even briefly, can come back wrong.
- 5
Light that comes from nowhere
Look for
Shadows pointing different ways, reflections in windows or eyes that don't match the scene, faces lit from an impossible angle.
Why it happens
Lighting is simulated by look, not by physics, so it's often beautiful and inconsistent.
- 6
The background crowd
Look for
Faces that melt when you pause, people who merge into each other, extras walking in loops or moving in eerie unison.
Why it happens
Models spend their detail on the subject. The background gets whatever's left.
- 7
Too-perfect camera moves
Look for
Impossibly smooth glides and drone-like sweeps through spaces no drone could fly, or a dreamy slow-motion sheen on everything.
Why it happens
Generated clips often default to cinematic motion. Real phone footage shakes, hunts for focus and over-exposes.
- 8
Short clips and suspicious cuts
Look for
A 'video' that's really a string of 5–10 second shots, with a hard cut right before anything complicated would happen.
Why it happens
Many generators produce short clips. Longer stories get stitched together, and the seams show.
- 9
Sound that's slightly off
Look for
Lip-sync that drifts, generic ambience that doesn't match the space, voices with no room echo, or perfectly clean audio in a chaotic scene.
Why it happens
Video and audio are often generated separately and glued together afterwards.
- 10
Watermarks, labels and credentials
Look for
A cropped or blurred corner where a generator's watermark used to be, a platform's 'AI-generated' label, or Content Credentials (C2PA) attached to the file.
Why it happens
Many tools mark their output. People who repost fakes often try to remove the evidence, which can be a tell in itself.
The honest caveat
Every one of these tells is getting rarer. The best generated photos and clips today pass a casual look, which is exactly why a single tell doesn't prove a fake, and no tell doesn't prove it's real. Use them together, and check the source.
Pixels are half the story. Check the source.
Find the first upload
Search the caption or key phrases. Fakes travel fastest as reposts; the original account often says what it is.
Reverse-search a frame
Grab a still and run it through Google Lens or TinEye. Old footage and known AI clips surface quickly.
Check the account
New account? Mostly viral clips? A bio that mentions AI art? Context like this matters as much as pixels.
Look for corroboration
If something big happened, there's other footage from other angles, and reporting. One clip alone is a red flag.
Still not sure? Get a second pair of eyes.
Find the AI reads what the file says about itself, then checks the picture for the traces generators leave behind.
Train your eye in a minute a day
Put these tells to work in Find the AI Daily, or get the week's viral fakes, debunked, in The Fake Report.