Document liveness

Confirming an ID document was captured live and in person right now, not photographed off a screen or reused from an earlier scan.

It answers the question "is this a real card in front of the camera at this moment?" instead of "does this image show a genuine card?"

Detection of signals, such as glare, texture, and capture motion, confirming a document image was captured directly from the physical item at the moment of submission, rather than replayed from a screen, a prior scan, or a static file.

Document liveness looks for evidence that a physical card is present:

• Glare and reflections, which move and change as the card or camera moves.
• Surface texture, which shows the grain of plastic or paper that a screen does not reproduce.
• Capture motion, such as the small shifts in perspective that occur when a person holds a card and moves a phone.
• Screen artifacts, such as moire patterns, which signal that the camera saw a display.

A typical check works like this:

1. The app guides the person to capture the document, often with a short video or several frames.
2. The system analyzes how the image changes across frames.
3. It decides whether the changes match a physical card captured live.

Document liveness sits next to terms that are easy to mix up:

• Liveness detection confirms a live person is present, while document liveness confirms a live document is present.
• Screen replay detection catches photos of screens and supports document liveness.
• Document verification checks whether the document is genuine, which is a separate question from how it was captured.