By Siwei Lyu
Publication Date: 2025-12-26 14:39:00
Over the course of 2025, deepfakes have increased dramatically. AI-generated faces, voices and full-body performances that mimic real people have increased in quality far beyond what even many experts would have expected just a few years ago. They were increasingly used to deceive people.
For many everyday scenarios – especially low-resolution video calls and media shared on social media platforms – their realism is now high enough to reliably fool even non-expert viewers. In practice, synthetic media becomes indistinguishable from authentic recordings for ordinary people and in some cases even institutions.
And this increase is not just limited to quality. The volume of deepfakes has exploded: cybersecurity firm DeepStrike estimates an increase from about 500,000 online deepfakes in 2023 to about 8 million in 2025, with annual growth of nearly 900%.
I am a computer scientist and research deepfakes and other synthetic media. From my vantage point I see…
