Worried you're talking to an AI deepfake? Try the viral three finger test

Not since Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds have three fingers blown someone's cover so spectacularly. The rise of deepfake agents being deployed in scam video calls yet another alarming AI development of the last few months. Deepfakes are no longer confined to the realms of funny celebrity videos – now they might actually try and take your money.

But a method for unmasking scammers is going viral online. Ask the person you're talking to to hold up three fingers in front of their face. If they refuse, they might just be masking their face with another.

Holding fingers in front of the face can disrupt live deepfake tech – which means if the person has a fake face plastered over their own, it can cause the tech to glitch and the real one to appear.

The technique has been doing the rounds online for the last few weeks, but experts say users shouldn't rely on it entirely. In an interview with Cybernews, Ben Colman, co-founder and CEO at Reality Defender, a company specialising in detecting deepfakes, claims that while the technique was rather foolproof a couple of years ago, deepfake models are getting better at adapting in realtime. “Relying on it gives people false confidence, which is arguably worse than no check at all,” adds Manny Ahmed, CEO and founder of OpenOrigins.

While it's useful to have another tool in your arsenal when it comes to knowing how to tell if you're talking to a deepfake, if anything, the fact that the technique is no longer foolproof is yet another sign of the terrifying rate at which AI is advancing.