Deepfake Generation–Detection Asymmetry in Live Remote Interactions: A Survey of Attacker Selectivity and Defensive Coverage

Faces and voices in live remote interactions are often treated as identity evidence, but advances in synthetic media generation weaken that inference. An attacker needs one feasible route to an incorrect identity or action decision; a defense must cover every route its policy admits under the stated attacker budget. This survey examines that generation–detection asymmetry across media checks, identity decisions, and action approval through five defense families grouped by evidence source and attacker influence. The first three families rely on attacker-influenced media: passive classification assesses caller-selected media, while behavioral challenges and physical probes constrain responses. The fourth family, trust infrastructure, constrains media entry and supports verifiable claims tied to systems or credentials. Out-of-band corroboration forms the fifth family and supplies evidence through a separately trusted route. The reviewed literature evaluates individual controls across all five families but does not establish complete-session reliability in live remote interactions. Audiovisual appearance alone cannot establish liveness, freshness, session binding, or identity correspondence. A convincing likeness should not be treated as authorization. Consequential actions require independently authenticated approval of the exact request through a separately trusted route. Finally, complete-session reliability should be assessed in realistic live sessions under adaptive attack.