mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Reverse Engineering of Generative Models: Inferring Model Hyperparameters from Generated Images

arXiv 2106.07873 ↗First posted 15 Jun 2021cs.CV cs.AI cs.LGcited by 58

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Abstract (arXiv)

State-of-the-art (SOTA) Generative Models (GMs) can synthesize photo-realistic images that are hard for humans to distinguish from genuine photos. Identifying and understanding manipulated media are crucial to mitigate the social concerns on the potential misuse of GMs. We propose to perform reverse engineering of GMs to infer model hyperparameters from the images generated by these models. We define a novel problem, ``model parsing", as estimating GM network architectures and training loss functions by examining their generated images -- a task seemingly impossible for human beings. To tackle this problem, we propose a framework with two components: a Fingerprint Estimation Network (FEN), which estimates a GM fingerprint from a generated image by training with four constraints to encourage the fingerprint to have desired properties, and a Parsing Network (PN), which predicts network architecture and loss functions from the estimated fingerprints. To evaluate our approach, we collect a fake image dataset with 100K images generated by 116 different GMs. Extensive experiments show encouraging results in parsing the hyperparameters of the unseen models. Finally, our fingerprint estimation can be leveraged for deepfake detection and image attribution, as we show by reporting SOTA results on both the deepfake detection (Celeb-DF) and image attribution benchmarks.

Key facts. Cited by 58 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 108 of its 159 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2021.

Builds on

108 of 159 references.

References · 108

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,185
  3. 2017Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attackscited by 6,326
  4. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
  5. 2016Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networkscited by 4,510
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38 more
  1. 2014Conditional Generative Adversarial Netscited by 2,152
  2. 2018Spectral Normalization for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,618
  3. 2016Context Encoders: Feature Learning by Inpaintingcited by 1,424
  4. 2016Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoisingcited by 1,352
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  8. 2020Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Datacited by 1,184
  9. 2019FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Imagescited by 1,095
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  13. 2018MnasNet: Platform-Aware Neural Architecture Search for Mobilecited by 937
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  21. 2016Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIscited by 602
  22. 2017Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation Networkscited by 602
  23. 2019Celeb-DF: A Large-scale Challenging Dataset for DeepFake Forensicscited by 573
  24. 2016Conditional Image Synthesis With Auxiliary Classifier GANscited by 562
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50 most cited of 108 All 108 (JSON)

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 1; 2022: 13; 2023: 13; 2024: 20; 2025: 8; 2026: 3.

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  1. 2022Self-supervised Learning of Adversarial Example: Towards Good Generalizations for Deepfake Detectioncited by 172
  2. 2023Hierarchical Fine-Grained Image Forgery Detection and Localizationcited by 134
  3. 2023Intriguing properties of synthetic images: from generative adversarial networks to diffusion modelscited by 121
  4. 2022Fusing Global and Local Features for Generalized AI-Synthesized Image Detectioncited by 88
  5. 2024Detecting Multimedia Generated by Large AI Models: A Surveycited by 73
  6. 2021CoNeRF: Controllable Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 65
  7. 2024Community Forensics: Using Thousands of Generators to Train Fake Image Detectorscited by 50
  8. 2023Detecting Images Generated by Deep Diffusion Models using their Local Intrinsic Dimensionalitycited by 44
  9. 2022RepMix: Representation Mixing for Robust Attribution of Synthesized Imagescited by 39
  10. 2022Exploring Disentangled Content Information for Face Forgery Detectioncited by 36
  11. 2022Proactive Image Manipulation Detectioncited by 35
  12. 2024AI-Face: A Million-Scale Demographically Annotated AI-Generated Face Dataset and Fairness Benchmarkcited by 28
38 more
  1. 2023MaLP: Manipulation Localization Using a Proactive Schemecited by 26
  2. 2022GLFF: Global and Local Feature Fusion for AI-synthesized Image Detectioncited by 25
  3. 2025Seeing What Matters: Generalizable AI-generated Video Detection with Forensic-Oriented Augmentationcited by 23
  4. 2024ManiFPT: Defining and Analyzing Fingerprints of Generative Modelscited by 18
  5. 2022Model Attribution of Face-swap Deepfake Videoscited by 17
  6. 2024ProMark: Proactive Diffusion Watermarking for Causal Attributioncited by 16
  7. 2024Language-guided Hierarchical Fine-grained Image Forgery Detection and Localizationcited by 16
  8. 2022On the Exploitation of Deepfake Model Recognitioncited by 14
  9. 2024Synthetic Image Verification in the Era of Generative AI: What Works and What Isn't There Yetcited by 13
  10. 2024A Survey of Defenses Against AI-Generated Visual Media: Detection,Disruption, and Authenticationcited by 12
  11. 20222D GANs Meet Unsupervised Single-view 3D Reconstructioncited by 11
  12. 2023Single-Model Attribution of Generative Models Through Final-Layer Inversioncited by 10
  13. 2023What can Discriminator do? Towards Box-free Ownership Verification of Generative Adversarial Networkcited by 10
  14. 2023GenAI Mirage: The Impostor Bias and the Deepfake Detection Challenge in the Era of Artificial Illusionscited by 10
  15. 2023Tracing Hyperparameter Dependencies for Model Parsing via Learnable Graph Pooling Networkcited by 8
  16. 2024Evolution of Detection Performance throughout the Online Lifespan of Synthetic Imagescited by 8
  17. 2025Scaling Up AI-Generated Image Detection with Generator-Aware Prototypescited by 8
  18. 2023PrObeD: Proactive Object Detection Wrappercited by 7
  19. 2024DeepFeatureX Net: Deep Features eXtractors based Network for discriminating synthetic from real imagescited by 6
  20. 2024Deepfake Media Forensics: State of the Art and Challenges Aheadcited by 6
  21. 2024COMPOSE: Comprehensive Portrait Shadow Editingcited by 6
  22. 2025Few-Shot Synthetic Image Attribution: Identifying Unseen Generators with Limited Samplescited by 6
  23. 2022How Do Deepfakes Move? Motion Magnification for Deepfake Source Detectioncited by 5
  24. 2023FakeTracer: Catching Face-swap DeepFakes via Implanting Traces in Trainingcited by 5
  25. 2023Model Synthesis for Zero-Shot Model Attributioncited by 5
  26. 2024Deepfake Detection without Deepfakes: Generalization via Synthetic Frequency Patterns Injectioncited by 5
  27. 2024Passive Deepfake Detection Across Multi-modalities: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 4
  28. 2024Generalized Deepfake Attributioncited by 3
  29. 2025Can GPT tell us why these images are synthesized? Empowering Multimodal Large Language Models for Forensicscited by 3
  30. 2025Webly-Supervised Image Manipulation Localization via Category-Aware Auto-Annotationcited by 3
  31. 2024Lazy Layers to Make Fine-Tuned Diffusion Models More Traceablecited by 2
  32. 2024Uncovering Hidden Intentions: Exploring Prompt Recovery for Deeper Insights into Generated Textscited by 2
  33. 2024Proactive Schemes: A Survey of Adversarial Attacks for Social Goodcited by 2
  34. 2025FAME: A Lightweight Spatio-Temporal Network for Model Attribution of Face-Swap Deepfakescited by 2
  35. 2022Deepfake Face Traceability with Disentangling Reversing Networkcited by 1
  36. 2023Can Adversarial Examples Be Parsed to Reveal Victim Model Information?cited by 1
  37. 2025LoRAX: LoRA eXpandable Networks for Continual Synthetic Image Attributioncited by 1
  38. 2025Is It Certainly a Deepfake? Reliability Analysis in Detection & Generation Ecosystemcited by 1

50 most cited of 58 All 58 (JSON)