# Fusing Global and Local Features for Generalized AI-Synthesized Image Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.13964 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13964/

## Key facts

- Cited by 88 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12423/) (2021)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [StarGAN: Unified Generative Adversarial Networks for Multi-Domain Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09020/) (2017)
- [CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot... for now](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11035/) (2019)
- [Celeb-DF: A Large-scale Challenging Dataset for DeepFake Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12962/) (2019)
- [Learning to See in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01934/) (2018)
- [Autoencoding beyond pixels using a learned similarity metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.09300/) (2015)
- [Multi-attentional Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02406/) (2021)
- [What makes fake images detectable? Understanding properties that generalize](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10588/) (2020)
- [The Creation and Detection of Deepfakes: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11138/) (2020)
- [Photographic Image Synthesis with Cascaded Refinement Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.09405/) (2017)
- [Are GAN generated images easy to detect? A critical analysis of the state-of-the-art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02617/) (2021)
- [MODNet: Real-Time Trimap-Free Portrait Matting via Objective Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11961/) (2020)
- [Diverse Image Synthesis from Semantic Layouts via Conditional IMLE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12373/) (2018)
- [Incremental learning for the detection and classification of GAN-generated images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01568/) (2019)
- [Reverse Engineering of Generative Models: Inferring Model Hyperparameters from Generated Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07873/) (2021)
- [DeepFake Detection: Current Challenges and Next Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09234/) (2020)
- [FReTAL: Generalizing Deepfake Detection using Knowledge Distillation and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13617/) (2021)
- [Detecting CNN-Generated Facial Images in Real-World Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.05632/) (2020)
- [GAN-generated Faces Detection: A Survey and New Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07145/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 88)

- [On the detection of synthetic images generated by diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00680/) (2022)
- [A Sanity Check for AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19435/) (2024)
- [Raising the Bar of AI-generated Image Detection with CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00195/) (2023)
- [VidProM: A Million-scale Real Prompt-Gallery Dataset for Text-to-Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06098/) (2024)
- [PatchCraft: Exploring Texture Patch for Efficient AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12397/) (2023)
- [SIDA: Social Media Image Deepfake Detection, Localization and Explanation with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04292/) (2024)
- [Improving Synthetic Image Detection Towards Generalization: An Image Transformation Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06741/) (2024)
- [Can ChatGPT Detect DeepFakes? A Study of Using Multimodal Large Language Models for Media Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14077/) (2024)
- [Spot the Fake: Large Multimodal Model-Based Synthetic Image Detection with Artifact Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14905/) (2025)
- [FakeInversion: Learning to Detect Images from Unseen Text-to-Image Models by Inverting Stable Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08603/) (2024)
- [Any-Resolution AI-Generated Image Detection by Spectral Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19417/) (2024)
- [Generalizable Synthetic Image Detection via Language-guided Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13800/) (2023)
- [AutoSplice: A Text-prompt Manipulated Image Dataset for Media Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06870/) (2023)
- [CO-SPY: Combining Semantic and Pixel Features to Detect Synthetic Images by AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18286/) (2025)
- [FakeBench: Probing Explainable Fake Image Detection via Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13306/) (2024)
- [AIGI-Holmes: Towards Explainable and Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection via Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02664/) (2025)
- [GLFF: Global and Local Feature Fusion for AI-synthesized Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08615/) (2022)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Ideal and Real-world Evaluation: Benchmarking AI-Generated Image Detection in Challenging Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09172/) (2025)
- [TGIF: Text-Guided Inpainting Forgery Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11566/) (2024)
- [Improving Synthetically Generated Image Detection in Cross-Concept Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12053/) (2023)
- [Your One-Stop Solution for AI-Generated Video Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11035/) (2026)
- [Synthetic Image Verification in the Era of Generative AI: What Works and What Isn't There Yet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00196/) (2024)
- [Uncertainty-Guided Appearance-Motion Association Network for Out-of-Distribution Action Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09953/) (2024)
- [Methods and Trends in Detecting AI-Generated Images: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15176/) (2025)
- [Data-Independent Operator: A Training-Free Artifact Representation Extractor for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06803/) (2024)
- [Navigating the Challenges of AI-Generated Image Detection in the Wild: What Truly Matters?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10236/) (2025)
- [TextureCrop: Enhancing Synthetic Image Detection through Texture-based Cropping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15500/) (2024)
- [TIP-I2V: A Million-Scale Real Text and Image Prompt Dataset for Image-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04709/) (2024)
- [Evolution of Detection Performance throughout the Online Lifespan of Synthetic Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11541/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Cross-Generator Image Forgery Detection through DINOv3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22471/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the development of the Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and DeepFakes, AI-synthesized images are now of such high quality that humans can hardly distinguish them from real images. It is imperative for media forensics to develop detectors to expose them accurately. Existing detection methods have shown high performance in generated images detection, but they tend to generalize poorly in the real-world scenarios, where the synthetic images are usually generated with unseen models using unknown source data. In this work, we emphasize the importance of combining information from the whole image and informative patches in improving the generalization ability of AI-synthesized image detection. Specifically, we design a two-branch model to combine global spatial information from the whole image and local informative features from multiple patches selected by a novel patch selection module. Multi-head attention mechanism is further utilized to fuse the global and local features. We collect a highly diverse dataset synthesized by 19 models with various objects and resolutions to evaluate our model. Experimental results demonstrate the high accuracy and good generalization ability of our method in detecting generated images. Our code is available at https://github.com/littlejuyan/FusingGlobalandLocal.