Face recognition in the real world
Understanding why some people are unusually good with faces, and how recognition ability can be measured fairly — so the right people can be identified and deployed in high-stakes roles.
IDeA Lab · Identity, Decisions & AI
How do people decide who someone is?
The IDeA Lab at UNSW Sydney's School of Psychology studies face recognition, memory, and identity decisions in the places where they matter most: policing, digital identity, evidence, and human–AI interaction.
Featured insight
“People are often confident in what they see and remember — but it is only when their ability is tested, that the gaps become clear.”
— Dr James Dunn
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Research
Identity, evidence, and decisions
How people make high-stakes judgements about faces, memory, and identity.
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Media
Expert comment and public impact
Plain-language insights on face recognition, AI-generated faces, and evidence.
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Tools
Tests and interactive demos
Try the UNSW Face Test and explore how people detect AI-generated faces.
Open toolsWhat we do
Research for decisions that cannot rely on guesswork.
We study how people perceive, recognise, and remember identity information. Our work connects cognitive science with practical problems in policing, security, legal evidence, and digital systems.
The lab uses behavioural experiments, eye-tracking, computational approaches, and real-world tasks to understand when people are accurate, when they are overconfident, and how human decision-making changes when AI enters the process.
For example, we study how passport officers compare faces, how police remember critical incidents and how people identify AI-generated faces online.
Learn more about our research themesResearch themes
How important decisions are made, tested, and improved.
Memory under pressure
Studying how stress, uncertainty, and context shape what people remember and how confidently they report it — so evidence can be interpreted more accurately and errors reduced.
AI-generated faces
Testing whether people can detect synthetic identities, what cues they use, and how AI changes trust online — so we can understand and mitigate risks from increasingly realistic fake identities.
Evidence and expertise
Evaluating how expert and non-expert decision-makers compare forensic evidence, interpret information, and avoid error — so identity decisions are more reliable in legal and investigative settings.
Media highlights
Accessible research for public questions about identity and AI.
AI faces
Can people spot synthetic identities?
Public-facing research on AI-generated faces, trust, and detection.
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Super-recognisers
What makes someone exceptional with faces?
Research on individual differences in face recognition and visual expertise.
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Press enquiries
Need expert comment?
Contact the lab for clear comment on face recognition, super-recognisers, prosopagnosia, and AI faces.
Get in touchTools and demos
Try the tasks used to study face recognition and AI detection.
These tools help the public engage with the science while supporting research into identity decisions.
Collaborate
Working on face recognition, identity verification, or AI systems?
The lab welcomes conversations with researchers, students, practitioners, and media who want evidence-based answers to real-world identity problems.