Evaluating Deception, Not Just Deepfakes

Abstract

Deepfake detection is typically evaluated as a media-classification task: given a clip, determine whether it is synthetic. Yet benchmark performance is increasingly invoked to support broader claims about preventing deepfake-enabled deception in video calls, voice calls, and targeted communications. We argue that these claims require evidence across two distinct validity gaps. External validity concerns whether detection performance transfers across generators, processing pipelines, and communication channels. Consequential validity, as used here, concerns whether reliable detection translates into timely intervention and prevention of harmful actions. Even perfect synthetic-origin classification does not guarantee prevention when verification is unavailable, intervention occurs too late, or recipients disregard warnings. We therefore propose a scenario-level evaluation framework that integrates media evidence, interaction-level indicators grounded in speech act theory, conversational pragmatics, and influence principles, and operational outcomes. We define candidate measures of attack prevention, benign pass-through, intervention precision under explicit deployment base rates, and intervention timing. Our position is that deployment-oriented evaluation must measure not only whether synthetic media is detected, but whether deception is prevented without unnecessarily disrupting legitimate interactions. https://jesseeho.github.io/deepfake-deception/

arXiv commentAccepted at the NeurIPS 2026 Workshop on Trustworthy AI Evaluation (TAE)