THE TERMS,EXPLAINED.

Definitions

Deepfake

Synthetic or manipulated video, image or audio in which a person's face, voice or actions are generated or altered so that they appear real.

Media forensics

The scientific examination of video, images, audio and documents to determine whether they are authentic, edited or synthetic, and how they were made.

Error Level Analysis (ELA)

A test that re-saves an image at a known quality and compares how regions respond. Edited regions can respond differently from their surroundings.

Sensor noise (PRNU)

A faint, camera-specific noise pattern left by an image sensor. Synthetic or pasted regions often fail to match the pattern of the rest of the frame.

Copy-move forgery

An edit in which part of an image is duplicated and pasted elsewhere in the same image, for example to hide or repeat an object.

Image splicing

Combining regions from different images into one composite, which can leave mismatched noise, lighting or edge structure.

Double compression

A trace left when a file has been compressed more than once, which can indicate re-saving or editing.

Group of pictures (GOP)

The repeating pattern of frame types used by a video encoder. Edited video can show a different or broken GOP structure.

Temporal consistency

How smoothly motion, lighting and edges change from frame to frame. Manipulated regions often break this smoothness.

Voice cloning

Using a model to generate speech that imitates a specific person's voice.

Spectral continuity

Whether the frequency content of an audio recording changes naturally over time. Splices and synthetic speech can interrupt it.

Electric network frequency (ENF)

A faint mains-hum signal embedded in some recordings. Its variation over time can be checked for gaps and joins.

Chain of custody

A recorded history of who handled a piece of evidence, when and how, used to show it has not been altered.

Air-gapped deployment

An installation with no connection to external networks, used for sensitive or classified environments.

Reproducible report

A report that lists inputs, hashes, software versions and parameters so another examiner can repeat the analysis and compare results.