Sophie J. Nightingale

Sophie J. Nightingale is a psychologist at Lancaster University's Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on human perception of synthetic media, including how people judge the authenticity and trustworthiness of AI-generated faces and the psychological mechanisms underlying deepfake vulnerability.

Sources in this wiki

• AI-synthesized faces are indistinguishable from real faces and more trustworthy — empirical study showing humans cannot distinguish StyleGAN2-generated faces from real ones, and rate synthetic faces as more trustworthy.

Topics

• deepfakes, synthetic-media, face-perception, trust

Notes

Nightingale's work bridges perceptual psychology and digital media threats, examining the human factors that make deepfakes effective for deception. The finding that synthetic faces are rated as more trustworthy than real faces has important implications for understanding why synthetic media can be weaponized for fraud and disinformation.