Liveness test

A liveness test, liveness check or liveness detection is an automated means of checking whether a subject is a real person or part of a spoofing attack.

In a video liveness test, users are typically asked to look into a camera and to move, smile or blink, and features of their moving face may then be compared to that of a still image. Artificial intelligence is used to counter presentation attacks such as deepfakes or users wearing hyperrealistic masks, or video injection attacks.^[1] The technique is used as part of know your customer checks in financial services^[2] and during facial age estimation.^[3]

Other forms of liveness test include checking for a pulse when using a fingerprint scanner^[4] or checking that a person's voice is not a recording or artifically generated during speaker recognition.^[5]

See also

• Artificial intelligence content detection
• Biometric spoofing
• Electronic authentication
• Identity verification service
• Multi-factor authentication
• Voice spoofing

Further reading

• "Biometric liveness follows growth trajectory of AI threats". Biometric Update. 2024-11-02. Retrieved 2025-01-22.