York forensic speech science team commended at Deepfake Detection Challenge

Posted on Monday 16 March 2026

A team from the Department of Language and Linguistic Science recently participated in the Deepfake Detection Challenge hosted by the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) at Microsoft London. The York team, comprising Ben Gibb-Reid, Amelia Gully, Vincent Hughes and Jessica Wormald, received commendations for their dedication to explainability and collaboration.

During the event, the researchers applied their forensic speech science expertise to operationally realistic scenarios. A key focus was the importance of explainability for both methods and outcomes in forensic practices.

The York researchers collaborated closely with a team from the University of Southampton, led by Jennifer Williams alongside Poppy Welch and Aidan O. This partnership demonstrated the effectiveness of combining human analysis with tool-based methods to strengthen deepfake detection capabilities.

The department plans to conduct further work in this critical area of forensic speech science over the next 12 months.

Learn more about the team's research on the Forensic Speech Science group website: https://sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/fssyork/home