Face Swap Glossary
a plain-language glossary of face swap and deepfake terminology: NCII, synthetic media, C2PA, likeness rights, temporal consistency, and more.
The short answer
The vocabulary in one place: synthetic media (AI-generated content), deepfake (deceptive-tier synthetic media of real people), face swap (the photo-tier mechanism), NCII (non-consensual intimate imagery — the absolute red line), likeness rights (who controls your face), C2PA (provenance labels), temporal consistency (video's hard problem). Know these seven and every article on this topic reads clearly.
The core seven
Synthetic media: any AI-generated or AI-altered content — the neutral umbrella term. Deepfake: synthetic media depicting real people, usually implying deceptive or non-consensual use — the term has drifted negative (see the comparison). Face swap: the mechanism — transferring one face onto another photo; a tool, not a judgment. NCII: non-consensual intimate imagery, real or synthetic — criminalized rapidly across jurisdictions (the laws page). Likeness rights: the legal control over commercial use of your appearance (right of publicity/privacy). C2PA / content credentials: the provenance-labeling standard attaching capture-and-edit history to media. Temporal consistency: video's frame-to-frame agreement problem — why video is the hard tier.
Pipeline and quality terms
Detection: finding faces and landmark points (eyes, nose, jaw) in an image. Alignment: warping the source face to the target's pose — the warping-failure stage. Generation: the model synthesizing the face at the new pose — not pasting, regenerating. Blending: fusing with matched lighting, color, and grain — the seam-failure stage. Occlusion: anything blocking the face (hair, glasses, hands) — the input killer. Identity fidelity vs realism: the two quality axes (looks-like-them vs looks-real — see accuracy).
Policy and law terms you will meet
Impersonation: deceptively depicting a real person — banned platform-wide. Parody/satire: the protected commentary category — protection shrinks as content looks real, sells things, or defames. BIPA: Illinois's biometric privacy statute, the litigation engine for face data. Right of publicity: the commercial-likeness tort — celebrity-ad liability lives here. AI Act: the EU's framework mandating synthetic-media transparency in its market. Labeling/disclosure: the platform-and-law obligation to mark AI content. Human authorship: the copyright requirement that leaves pure AI outputs unprotected (copyright page).
FAQ
What does deepfake actually mean?
Originally a technical term (deep-learning fake); now mostly negative — synthetic media of real people, usually implying deception or non-consent. A face swap is the same mechanism at photo scale, without the connotation.
What is NCII?
Non-consensual intimate imagery — explicit images of someone shared without consent, real or AI-generated. Criminalized across most US states and federally by the 2025 TAKE IT DOWN Act.
What are C2PA or content credentials?
A provenance standard attaching tamper-evident capture and edit history to media files — the emerging technical answer to "is this real?".