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Too beautiful to be fake: Attractive faces are less likely to be judged as artificially generated

Makowski, D., Te, A. S., Neves, A., Kirk, S., Liang, N. Z., Mavros, P., & Chen, S. A.

Acta Psychologica, 2025

As AI-generated faces become indistinguishable from photographs, what people fall back on to judge reality starts to matter. Attractive faces were less likely to be judged as artificially generated: beauty reads as authenticity.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104670
• Full text (PDF)

Keywords: Aesthetics · Reality Beliefs

Cite

Makowski, D., Te, A. S., Neves, A., Kirk, S., Liang, N. Z., Mavros, P., & Chen, S. A. (2025). Too beautiful to be fake: Attractive faces are less likely to be judged as artificially generated. Acta Psychologica. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104670

See also

• Introducing the Choice-Confidence (CHOCO) Model for Bimodal Data from Subjective Ratings: Application to the Effect of Attractiveness on Reality Beliefs about AI-Generated Faces — Makowski, D., Neves, A., & Field, A. P. (2025)
• Bad News: Testing Gamified Inoculation Against Misinformation — Dickinson, R., Makowski, D., Van Marwijk, H., & Ford, E. (2025)
• Exploring the Role of News Outlets in the Rise of a Conspiracy Theory: Hydroxychloroquine in the Early Days of COVID-19 — Dickinson, R., Makowski, D., van Marwijk, H., & Ford, E. (2024)