# Leveraging Frequency Analysis for Deep Fake Image Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.08685 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08685/

## Key facts

- Cited by 504 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 504)

- [Towards Universal Fake Image Detectors that Generalize Across Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10174/) (2023)
- [DIRE for Diffusion-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09295/) (2023)
- [Detecting Deepfakes with Self-Blended Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08376/) (2022)
- [The Stable Signature: Rooting Watermarks in Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15435/) (2023)
- [On the detection of synthetic images generated by diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00680/) (2022)
- [FreeU: Free Lunch in Diffusion U-Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11497/) (2023)
- [A Sanity Check for AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19435/) (2024)
- [Forgery-aware Adaptive Transformer for Generalizable Synthetic Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16649/) (2023)
- [UCF: Uncovering Common Features for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13949/) (2023)
- [Raising the Bar of AI-generated Image Detection with CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00195/) (2023)
- [Rethinking the Backdoor Attacks' Triggers: A Frequency Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03413/) (2021)
- [Exploring Temporal Coherence for More General Video Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06693/) (2021)
- [Are GAN generated images easy to detect? A critical analysis of the state-of-the-art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02617/) (2021)
- [VidProM: A Million-scale Real Prompt-Gallery Dataset for Text-to-Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06098/) (2024)
- [Leveraging Real Talking Faces via Self-Supervision for Robust Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07131/) (2022)
- [AEROBLADE: Training-Free Detection of Latent Diffusion Images Using Autoencoder Reconstruction Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17879/) (2024)
- [Pros and Cons of GAN Evaluation Measures: New Developments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09396/) (2021)
- [Intriguing properties of synthetic images: from generative adversarial networks to diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06408/) (2023)
- [PatchCraft: Exploring Texture Patch for Efficient AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12397/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Model Made Slim](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17106/) (2022)
- [C2P-CLIP: Injecting Category Common Prompt in CLIP to Enhance Generalization in Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09647/) (2024)
- [Towards the Detection of Diffusion Model Deepfakes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14571/) (2022)
- [SIDA: Social Media Image Deepfake Detection, Localization and Explanation with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04292/) (2024)
- [Dual Contrastive Learning for General Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13522/) (2021)
- [TALL: Thumbnail Layout for Deepfake Video Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07494/) (2023)
- [Identifying and Mitigating the Security Risks of Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14840/) (2023)
- [Leveraging Representations from Intermediate Encoder-blocks for Synthetic Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19091/) (2024)
- [Improving Synthetic Image Detection Towards Generalization: An Image Transformation Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06741/) (2024)
- [Face Forensics in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16076/) (2021)
- [Self-Supervised Video Forensics by Audio-Visual Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01767/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep neural networks can generate images that are astonishingly realistic, so much so that it is often hard for humans to distinguish them from actual photos. These achievements have been largely made possible by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). While deep fake images have been thoroughly investigated in the image domain - a classical approach from the area of image forensics - an analysis in the frequency domain has been missing so far. In this paper, we address this shortcoming and our results reveal that in frequency space, GAN-generated images exhibit severe artifacts that can be easily identified. We perform a comprehensive analysis, showing that these artifacts are consistent across different neural network architectures, data sets, and resolutions. In a further investigation, we demonstrate that these artifacts are caused by upsampling operations found in all current GAN architectures, indicating a structural and fundamental problem in the way images are generated via GANs. Based on this analysis, we demonstrate how the frequency representation can be used to identify deep fake images in an automated way, surpassing state-of-the-art methods.