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Pause the sensitive conversation, stop sharing confidential material, and verify the participant through a trusted channel that is independent of the flagged audio and video. Do not ask for a password, one-time verification code, recovery code, payment instruction, or other secret as proof. If the person is confirmed genuine, document and report the false positive. If identity cannot be confirmed, end or remove the call and contact your security team.

A detector alert is a prompt to investigate, not proof that a participant is synthetic. Teams account labels provide organizational context, while a deepfake detector evaluates media; neither one alone establishes the other.

What to do immediately

Treat the alert as a potential security issue without treating the participant as guilty. Your first objective is to prevent disclosure while identity is checked.

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  1. Pause sensitive discussion. Stop discussing credentials, customer data, unreleased plans, financial information, incident details, or anything else that would create harm if the wrong person were listening.
  2. Stop screen sharing and other exposure. End a presentation, close confidential documents, and stop sending files or links until verification is complete.
  3. Explain the pause neutrally. Tell the participant that an automated check raised an alert and that you must use the normal identity-verification process. Do not publicly accuse them of being a deepfake; false positives are possible.
  4. Verify independently. Call or message the person using a work number, contact record, or alternate conversation that was established before the meeting. Do not use only a callback number, link, or contact detail supplied during the flagged interaction.
  5. Decide whether to continue. Continue only after the independent check confirms that the person intentionally joined and your organization permits the meeting to proceed. Otherwise, end or remove the call according to your role and meeting policy, then contact security.

Microsoft’s Teams calling guidance states: “Verify the caller’s identity using a trusted communication channel if necessary,” and “Do not share sensitive information until the caller’s identity is confirmed.” Those principles apply even when the alert might be wrong.

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Separate account identity from media authenticity

Two different questions are often confused during a detector incident:

  1. Is this the expected person or organization? This is an account and identity question. Confirm it through a known channel.
  2. Is the audio or video being presented authentic? This is a media-analysis question. It requires a detector validated for the relevant conditions and human investigation of its result.

A Teams identity label cannot answer the second question. Conversely, a detector alert does not by itself prove that the Teams account is unauthorized. Keep both investigations separate in your notes and in your security escalation.

How to interpret Teams participant labels

What you may see What it indicates What it does not prove
Internal participant The account is associated with your organization’s tenant. That the current audio or video is genuine, or that the account has not been compromised.
Guest The participant is joining with guest context in the meeting or tenant. That the person is malicious or that the presented media is synthetic.
External user The account is outside your organization. That the person is an impersonator or that the media is fake.
Unverified Teams cannot verify the participant’s identity in the available context. That a deepfake is present. “Unverified” is not a biometric or synthetic-media finding.

Use these badges to decide how much independent confirmation is appropriate, not as a substitute for that confirmation.

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How to verify someone on a Teams call

Use a channel you already trust

Choose a communication route whose authenticity was established before the call: a known work telephone number from your directory, an existing conversation in a separate approved service, or a contact record maintained by your organization. If the person is a supplier or customer, use the number already held in your vendor or customer system rather than a number displayed in the suspicious meeting.

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Ask a simple confirmation question that does not reveal a secret, such as whether they intentionally joined the scheduled meeting and what meeting purpose they expected. The goal is to establish control of the trusted account or telephone route, not to collect credentials.

Never turn secrets into an identity test

  • Do not ask for a password.
  • Do not ask for a multifactor-authentication code, recovery code, or approval prompt.
  • Do not ask the participant to read a payment instruction or reset a security setting.
  • Do not send a verification link and rely on a click as your only proof.

A genuine colleague may be unable to complete an unusual check, and an attacker may be able to repeat information already visible in the meeting. Keep the independent confirmation narrow and follow your organization’s established process.

What to do when confirmation succeeds

Record who performed the check, which pre-existing channel was used, when it occurred, and what was confirmed. Tell the participant that the detector result is being handled as a false positive or an unresolved alert; avoid claiming that the detector has been disproved unless your security or detector owner has investigated it. Resume sensitive work only if the meeting owner and security policy allow it.

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What to do when confirmation fails

If the person cannot be reached through a trusted route, gives conflicting answers, or pressures you to bypass the check, do not continue sensitive business. End the call or remove the participant if your role allows it. Preserve relevant details under your organization’s evidence rules and notify security. Do not prolong the interaction to “test” the suspected deepfake.

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What to record after a false positive or unresolved alert

Make the record useful to both incident responders and the detector owner. Capture:

  • The meeting date and time, meeting identifier or link, and your role in the meeting.
  • The participant’s displayed name and visible account context, such as internal, guest, external, or unverified.
  • The detector product or integration, alert wording, time of the alert, and whether audio, video, or both were analyzed.
  • What was visible or audible when the alert occurred, without editing evidence in a way that removes context.
  • The independent channel used, the person or team contacted, the time of confirmation, and the result.
  • Any sensitive information that may have been exposed before the pause, following your organization’s incident-reporting rules.

Preserve screenshots, logs, or recordings only as permitted by your privacy, retention, and evidence-handling policies. Do not forward participant video or personal data broadly just to ask colleagues whether it “looks fake.”

How to report the call in Teams

End-user reporting

When the organization has enabled the feature, Microsoft places the call-reporting action at Calls > History > More > Report call. Availability and labels can vary by organization and Teams version. Include the detector alert and the independent verification result, and state clearly whether the participant was confirmed genuine, remained unverified, or was escalated as suspicious.

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Security-team escalation

Use your normal security-incident route in addition to the Teams report. Security staff may need to correlate the meeting with account sign-in records, invitations, messages, or other reports. A report that says only “deepfake detected” is less useful than one that separates the media alert from the identity check and describes exactly what happened.

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Administrator investigation

Teams administrators can inspect the Security detections report under Analytics & reports > Protection reports. The table can be exported; the CSV can include investigation fields such as Sender MRI, recipient identifiers, and Thread ID. These fields help administrators trace an event. They are administrative investigation data, not end-user proof that a participant’s media was synthetic.

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Can you trust an AI deepfake detector?

You can use a detector as a risk signal, but you should not treat a single alert as a final identity decision. NIST says automated media analysis should be tested on both genuine and manipulated samples so expected false-positive and false-negative rates are known. It also says automated analysis and decisions should be augmented by manual review to address detection errors.

NIST’s Guardians of Forensic Evidence project page, updated September 25, 2026, characterizes current AI detection systems as showing 45–50% performance degradation when moving from academic evaluation to operational deployment. That is a project-level characterization, not an accuracy estimate for every detector and not a Teams-specific measurement. It cannot be used to calculate the probability that a particular Teams alert is wrong.

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For an alert to be meaningful, the detector owner should be able to explain:

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  • Which Teams media formats, codecs, resolutions, lighting, microphones, and network conditions were evaluated.
  • Whether the model was tested on genuine Teams calls as well as manipulated samples.
  • Its measured false-positive and false-negative performance in conditions comparable to your meeting.
  • Whether a human reviewer examined the alert and what evidence supported the decision.
  • How the system handles missing video, compressed audio, screen-share content, prerecorded material, or rapid speaker changes.

The selected guidance does not establish a validated accuracy or false-positive rate for the detector involved in this scenario. Do not invent one, and do not describe the alert as conclusive until the tool has been validated for the relevant operating conditions and a human investigation supports that conclusion.

Meeting controls that reduce exposure next time

For sensitive meetings, administrators and organizers can reduce what an unverified or newly joined participant can do while identity checks are pending. Teams documentation describes controls for:

Control area How it helps Limit
Lobby bypass Requires selected participants to wait until the organizer admits them. It controls entry; it does not authenticate a face or voice.
Presenting Restricts who can share a screen or content. It limits exposure and disruption, but does not detect synthetic media.
Recording Restricts who can create a meeting recording. It protects meeting content; it does not prove a participant is genuine.
External or anonymous access Applies tighter admission and participation rules to people outside the organization, subject to policy. External status is not evidence of fraud.
Sensitivity labels and custom meeting templates Can enforce relevant meeting settings for designated types of meetings. Microsoft says these options require Teams Premium, and they still do not adjudicate deepfake alerts.

Set these controls before the meeting, communicate the verification procedure to attendees, and make sure a host or delegate can admit, remove, and escalate participants. Restrictions buy time and reduce exposure; they are not a replacement for an out-of-band identity check.

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When a synthetic-media detection bot is involved

Microsoft’s beta Graph API defines a reportSyntheticMedia action for certified third-party audio/video synthetic-media detection bots admitted to a meeting. A tenant administrator must grant the Calls.ReportSyntheticMedia.All application permission.

This is an integration path for a bot and its administrators. It is not a general Teams attendee button for dismissing a false alert, and it does not remove the need for human review, trusted-channel confirmation, or your organization’s incident process. Because the API is beta, administrators should verify current documentation, permission requirements, and organizational approval before relying on it in production.

A practical decision path

  1. Alert appears: pause sensitive content and stop sharing.
  2. Context check: note the participant’s displayed name and Teams label, but do not interpret the label as biometric evidence.
  3. Independent check: contact the person through a previously trusted route without requesting secrets.
  4. Confirmed: document the check, report the detector’s false positive through the available process, and continue only under meeting policy.
  5. Not confirmed: end or remove the call, preserve permitted evidence, and contact security.
  6. Review: have the detector owner and security team assess operating conditions, error expectations, and human-review findings.

This sequence protects confidential information while giving a genuine participant a fair path to clear an automated alert.

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