Liveness check
Also called liveness detection, selfie check, selfie verification
A check that the face in a selfie or video belongs to a real person present right now, not a photo, mask or deepfake.
When you open an account online, the company can't see you, so it asks for a selfie or a short video and compares it with your ID. The liveness part is the check that a real, present person is in front of a real camera, by asking you to move, blink or turn, or by analysing the video for signs of a screen or mask.
AI is the reason these checks are now an arms race. Deepfake video can move, blink and turn on request, and some fraudsters feed it into the check through software that pretends to be a webcam. FinCEN lists exactly that, a third-party webcam plugin, as a red flag for banks.
For everyone else, the practical point is where you do it: only inside the official app, never through a link someone sends you.
For example
To open a bank account in an app, you're asked to film your face and turn your head while the app checks it against your passport.
Put it to use
Where you'll meet liveness check in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, how to use it there, and the mix-up most people make.
Daily Bytes Plus is in the Android app.