# Open-Domain, Content-based, Multi-modal Fact-checking of Out-of-Context Images via Online Resources

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.00061 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00061/

## Key facts

- Cited by 71 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Language Models as Knowledge Bases?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01066/) (2019)
- [FEVER: a large-scale dataset for Fact Extraction and VERification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05355/) (2018)
- [Reading Wikipedia to Answer Open-Domain Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00051/) (2017)
- [How Much Knowledge Can You Pack Into the Parameters of a Language Model?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08910/) (2020)
- [Cyclical Learning Rates for Training Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01186/) (2015)
- [From Recognition to Cognition: Visual Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10830/) (2018)
- [Get Your Vitamin C! Robust Fact Verification with Contrastive Evidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08541/) (2021)
- [Towards Debiasing Fact Verification Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05267/) (2019)
- [Fighting Fake News: Image Splice Detection via Learned Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04096/) (2018)
- [Visual News: Benchmark and Challenges in News Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03743/) (2020)
- [Ask Me Anything: Dynamic Memory Networks for Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.07285/) (2015)
- [NewsCLIPpings: Automatic Generation of Out-of-Context Multimodal Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05893/) (2021)
- [DeClarE: Debunking Fake News and False Claims using Evidence-Aware Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06416/) (2018)
- [Automated Fact Checking: Task formulations, methods and future directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07687/) (2018)
- [SBERT-WK: A Sentence Embedding Method by Dissecting BERT-based Word Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06652/) (2020)
- [Fact-Checking Meets Fauxtography: Verifying Claims About Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.11722/) (2019)
- [Language Models as Fact Checkers?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04102/) (2020)
- [Where Are the Facts? Searching for Fact-checked Information to Alleviate the Spread of Fake News](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03159/) (2020)
- [Detecting Cross-Modal Inconsistency to Defend Against Neural Fake News](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07698/) (2020)
- [Attend to You: Personalized Image Captioning with Context Sequence Memory Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.06485/) (2017)
- [Deep Multimodal Image-Repurposing Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.06686/) (2018)
- [Multimedia Semantic Integrity Assessment Using Joint Embedding Of Images And Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.01606/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 71)

- [End-to-End Multimodal Fact-Checking and Explanation Generation: A Challenging Dataset and Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12487/) (2022)
- [Detecting and Grounding Multi-Modal Media Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02556/) (2023)
- [SNIFFER: Multimodal Large Language Model for Explainable Out-of-Context Misinformation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03170/) (2024)
- [MMFakeBench: A Mixed-Source Multimodal Misinformation Detection Benchmark for LVLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08772/) (2024)
- [Detecting and Grounding Multi-Modal Media Manipulation and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14203/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Automated Fact-Checking: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13507/) (2023)
- [Missing Counter-Evidence Renders NLP Fact-Checking Unrealistic for Misinformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13865/) (2022)
- [DEFAME: Dynamic Evidence-based FAct-checking with Multimodal Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10510/) (2024)
- [VERITE: A Robust Benchmark for Multimodal Misinformation Detection Accounting for Unimodal Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14133/) (2023)
- [Bootstrapping Multi-view Representations for Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05741/) (2022)
- [Synthetic Misinformers: Generating and Combating Multimodal Misinformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01217/) (2023)
- [Support or Refute: Analyzing the Stance of Evidence to Detect Out-of-Context Mis- and Disinformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01766/) (2023)
- [RED-DOT: Multimodal Fact-checking via Relevant Evidence Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09939/) (2023)
- [Interpretable Multimodal Misinformation Detection with Logic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05964/) (2023)
- [FACTIFY3M: A Benchmark for Multimodal Fact Verification with Explainability through 5W Question-Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05523/) (2023)
- [Multi-modal Fake News Detection on Social Media via Multi-grained Information Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00827/) (2023)
- [Combating Online Misinformation Videos: Characterization, Detection, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03242/) (2023)
- [Unified Frequency-Assisted Transformer Framework for Detecting and Grounding Multi-Modal Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09667/) (2023)
- [COVE: COntext and VEracity prediction for out-of-context images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01194/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Misinformation Detection by Learning from Synthetic Data with Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19656/) (2024)
- [Similarity over Factuality: Are we making progress on multimodal out-of-context misinformation detection?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13488/) (2024)
- [Robust Domain Misinformation Detection via Multi-modal Feature Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14315/) (2023)
- [TRUST-VL: An Explainable News Assistant for General Multimodal Misinformation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04448/) (2025)
- [Credible, Unreliable or Leaked?: Evidence Verification for Enhanced Automated Fact-checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18971/) (2024)
- [Has It All Been Solved? Open NLP Research Questions Not Solved by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12544/) (2023)
- [E2LVLM:Evidence-Enhanced Large Vision-Language Model for Multimodal Out-of-Context Misinformation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10455/) (2025)
- [XFacta: Contemporary, Real-World Dataset and Evaluation for Multimodal Misinformation Detection with Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09999/) (2025)
- [CMIE: Combining MLLM Insights with External Evidence for Explainable Out-of-Context Misinformation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23449/) (2025)
- [The Next Phase of Scientific Fact-Checking: Advanced Evidence Retrieval from Complex Structured Academic Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20844/) (2025)
- [Verifying Cross-modal Entity Consistency in News using Vision-language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11403/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Misinformation is now a major problem due to its potential high risks to our core democratic and societal values and orders. Out-of-context misinformation is one of the easiest and effective ways used by adversaries to spread viral false stories. In this threat, a real image is re-purposed to support other narratives by misrepresenting its context and/or elements. The internet is being used as the go-to way to verify information using different sources and modalities. Our goal is an inspectable method that automates this time-consuming and reasoning-intensive process by fact-checking the image-caption pairing using Web evidence. To integrate evidence and cues from both modalities, we introduce the concept of 'multi-modal cycle-consistency check'; starting from the image/caption, we gather textual/visual evidence, which will be compared against the other paired caption/image, respectively. Moreover, we propose a novel architecture, Consistency-Checking Network (CCN), that mimics the layered human reasoning across the same and different modalities: the caption vs. textual evidence, the image vs. visual evidence, and the image vs. caption. Our work offers the first step and benchmark for open-domain, content-based, multi-modal fact-checking, and significantly outperforms previous baselines that did not leverage external evidence.