# Identity-driven Three-Player Generative Adversarial Network for Synthetic-based Face Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.00358 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00358/

## Key facts

- Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2023.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06676/) (2020)
- [CosFace: Large Margin Cosine Loss for Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09414/) (2018)
- [VGGFace2: A dataset for recognising faces across pose and age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.08092/) (2017)
- [Joint Face Detection and Alignment using Multi-task Cascaded Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02878/) (2016)
- [Which Training Methods for GANs do actually Converge?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04406/) (2018)
- [MS-Celeb-1M: A Dataset and Benchmark for Large-Scale Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08221/) (2016)
- [Learning Face Representation from Scratch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7923/) (2014)
- [CurricularFace: Adaptive Curriculum Learning Loss for Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00288/) (2020)
- [Deep Face Recognition: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06655/) (2018)
- [Cross-Age LFW: A Database for Studying Cross-Age Face Recognition in Unconstrained Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08197/) (2017)
- [Disentangled and Controllable Face Image Generation via 3D Imitative-Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11660/) (2020)
- [ElasticFace: Elastic Margin Loss for Deep Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09416/) (2021)
- [SynFace: Face Recognition with Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07960/) (2021)
- [DigiFace-1M: 1 Million Digital Face Images for Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02579/) (2022)
- [Generative Low-bitwidth Data Free Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03603/) (2020)
- [SFace: Privacy-friendly and Accurate Face Recognition using Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10520/) (2022)
- [Privacy-friendly Synthetic Data for the Development of Face Morphing Attack Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06691/) (2022)
- [PocketNet: Extreme Lightweight Face Recognition Network using Neural Architecture Search and Multi-Step Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10710/) (2021)
- [Self-restrained Triplet Loss for Accurate Masked Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01716/) (2021)
- [SYN-MAD 2022: Competition on Face Morphing Attack Detection Based on Privacy-aware Synthetic Training Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07337/) (2022)
- [About Face: A Survey of Facial Recognition Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.00813/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Face Recognition using Unlabeled Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07371/) (2022)
- [QuantFace: Towards Lightweight Face Recognition by Synthetic Data Low-bit Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10526/) (2022)
- [SynthASpoof: Developing Face Presentation Attack Detection Based on Privacy-friendly Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02660/) (2023)
- [An Assessment of GANs for Identity-related Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10553/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [IDiff-Face: Synthetic-based Face Recognition through Fizzy Identity-Conditioned Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04995/) (2023)
- [Synthetic Data for Face Recognition: Current State and Future Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01021/) (2023)
- [SDFR: Synthetic Data for Face Recognition Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04580/) (2024)
- [ExFaceGAN: Exploring Identity Directions in GAN's Learned Latent Space for Synthetic Identity Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05151/) (2023)
- [Edit Away and My Face Will not Stay: Personal Biometric Defense against Malicious Generative Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16832/) (2024)
- [ID3: Identity-Preserving-yet-Diversified Diffusion Models for Synthetic Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17576/) (2024)
- [Vec2Face: Scaling Face Dataset Generation with Loosely Constrained Vectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02979/) (2024)
- [50 Years of Automated Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24247/) (2025)
- [GraFIQs: Face Image Quality Assessment Using Gradient Magnitudes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12203/) (2024)
- [Synthetic Face Datasets Generation via Latent Space Exploration from Brownian Identity Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00228/) (2024)
- [HyperFace: Generating Synthetic Face Recognition Datasets by Exploring Face Embedding Hypersphere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08470/) (2024)
- [Data Synthesis with Diverse Styles for Face Recognition via 3DMM-Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00430/) (2025)
- [Bias and Diversity in Synthetic-based Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03970/) (2023)
- [Digi2Real: Bridging the Realism Gap in Synthetic Data Face Recognition via Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02188/) (2024)
- [VariFace: Fair and Diverse Synthetic Dataset Generation for Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06235/) (2024)
- [Synthesizing Iris Images using Generative Adversarial Networks: Survey and Comparative Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17105/) (2024)
- [If It's Not Enough, Make It So: Reducing Authentic Data Demand in Face Recognition through Synthetic Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03537/) (2024)
- [Unveiling Synthetic Faces: How Synthetic Datasets Can Expose Real Identities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24015/) (2024)
- [NegFaceDiff: The Power of Negative Context in Identity-Conditioned Diffusion for Synthetic Face Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09661/) (2025)
- [Massively Annotated Datasets for Assessment of Synthetic and Real Data in Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15234/) (2024)
- [StyleDiT: A Unified Framework for Diverse Child and Partner Faces Synthesis with Style Latent Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10785/) (2024)
- [IDperturb: Enhancing Variation in Synthetic Face Generation via Angular Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18831/) (2026)
- [Vec2Face+ for Face Dataset Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17192/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Domain Diversity in Synthetic Data Face Recognition with Dataset Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16790/) (2025)
- [A Comparative Study on Synthetic Facial Data Generation Techniques for Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05928/) (2025)
- [Reinforcement-Guided Synthetic Data Generation for Privacy-Sensitive Identity Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07884/) (2026)
- [SynThermFace: Amplifying Limited Paired Data for Visible-Thermal Face Recognition via Synthetic Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10303/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Many of the commonly used datasets for face recognition development are collected from the internet without proper user consent. Due to the increasing focus on privacy in the social and legal frameworks, the use and distribution of these datasets are being restricted and strongly questioned. These databases, which have a realistically high variability of data per identity, have enabled the success of face recognition models. To build on this success and to align with privacy concerns, synthetic databases, consisting purely of synthetic persons, are increasingly being created and used in the development of face recognition solutions. In this work, we present a three-player generative adversarial network (GAN) framework, namely IDnet, that enables the integration of identity information into the generation process. The third player in our IDnet aims at forcing the generator to learn to generate identity-separable face images. We empirically proved that our IDnet synthetic images are of higher identity discrimination in comparison to the conventional two-player GAN, while maintaining a realistic intra-identity variation. We further studied the identity link between the authentic identities used to train the generator and the generated synthetic identities, showing very low similarities between these identities. We demonstrated the applicability of our IDnet data in training face recognition models by evaluating these models on a wide set of face recognition benchmarks. In comparison to the state-of-the-art works in synthetic-based face recognition, our solution achieved comparable results to a recent rendering-based approach and outperformed all existing GAN-based approaches. The training code and the synthetic face image dataset are publicly available ( https://github.com/fdbtrs/Synthetic-Face-Recognition ).