The Short Version
While some leading deepfake detection tools report 92–98% accuracy in controlled lab settings, these figures come largely from vendor benchmarks, not independent real-world testing. Multiple sources — including academic challenge benchmarks and forensic experts — document that detection accuracy drops by 45–50% under real-world conditions such as compression, low-quality media, and novel AI generators. Some deployed systems are only ~80% effective. Calling the technology "highly accurate and reliable" as a blanket characterization significantly overstates its current operational performance.