One honest warning first: today's tells fade fast. Every trick below can be fixed by the next generation of AI tools. So treat the tells as clues, not proof — and treat verification (checking through a second, independent channel) as the real skill.
AI images: look closely, then look again
- Hands, teeth, and text. Extra or merged fingers, too many teeth, and garbled words on signs, shirts, or packaging are still the most common giveaways.
- Skin and detail that is too smooth. Waxy skin, hair that melts into the background, and earrings or glasses that don't match each other.
- Light and shadows that disagree. Shadows falling in different directions, or a face lit differently from the room around it.
- Backgrounds that warp. Bent doorframes, impossible architecture, crowds where faces dissolve.
- Check it: run a reverse image search (Google Lens or TinEye) to see if the same image appears elsewhere, older, or in a different context. Note that photo metadata is often stripped when an image is shared, so don't rely on it alone.
AI video and deepfakes: watch the joins
- Lips and voice out of sync, unnatural blinking, or a face whose edges shimmer against the background.
- Lighting on the face that doesn't match the room, or a head that moves slightly differently from the body.
- Claims that only exist in one clip. A shocking statement from a public figure that no reputable outlet, official account, or transcript carries is a red flag on its own.
- Verify through a second channel: check the person's official account or website, and look for independent coverage before you believe or share a clip.
AI voice clones: the urgent call is the test
- The classic setup: a call that sounds like family, a boss, or a bank, urgently asking for money, gift cards, a wire, or a code.
- Hang up and call back on a number you already have — not one the caller gives you. A real emergency survives a callback; a scam does not.
- Ask something only the real person knows — a shared memory, not a fact findable online. A voice clone can imitate sound; it cannot know your private history.
- Remember: a few seconds of someone's voice from a video or voicemail is enough to build a clone. Familiarity of the voice proves nothing by itself.
AI-written reviews and endorsements: too perfect is suspicious
- Reviews with no specifics: polished, generic praise repeated across many reviewers, with no detail about an actual experience, date, or product quirk.
- Bursts of similar reviews appearing at once, or reviewer profiles with no other history.
- Celebrity endorsements that only exist as ads: a famous face "endorsing" a miracle product that never appears on that person's own channels. Check the celebrity's official account before believing it.
- Miracle claims — cures, guaranteed returns, "doctors don't want you to know" — are a red flag regardless of who appears to say them.
AI-generated listings and stores: the deal that is too good
- Impossibly low prices on rentals, cars, or electronics, with photos that reverse-search to other listings or stock images.
- No verifiable address, phone number, or business history — and pressure to pay by wire, gift card, or cryptocurrency, which are hard to reverse.
- Never pay before you can verify the seller, the property, or the product through an independent channel.
The five-second check
Before you share, buy, or send money, pause and run this:
- Pause. Urgency is the scammer's best tool. Nothing legitimate breaks if you take five minutes.
- Check the source. Who actually posted this — and is that account real?
- Reverse-search the image. Has it appeared before, somewhere else, meaning something else?
- Verify through a second channel. A callback, an official account, an independent report — not a link the sender gave you.
- Look for the tells above — but remember, absence of tells proves nothing. Verification is what counts.
If you already paid, shared, or believed it
- Stop contact with the sender and save everything: messages, links, receipts, account details.
- Report fraud to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.
- Contact your bank or card issuer right away if money moved — speed matters for reversals.
- If a fake image or video of you is circulating, report it to the platform hosting it and keep copies of the report.
- AI-detector tools exist, but they are unreliable on their own. Don't treat a detector score — clean or flagged — as proof either way.
Faike is general education only, not legal, technical, or financial advice. AI tools change quickly; the habits on this page — pause, check the source, verify twice — outlast any single trick.