# Synthetic Image Detection: Highlights from the IEEE Video and Image Processing Cup 2022 Student Competition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12428 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12428/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [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)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [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)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)
- [CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot... for now](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11035/) (2019)
- [Resolution-robust Large Mask Inpainting with Fourier Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07161/) (2021)
- [Free-Form Image Inpainting with Gated Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03589/) (2018)
- [Tackling the Generative Learning Trilemma with Denoising Diffusion GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07804/) (2021)
- [Detecting and Simulating Artifacts in GAN Fake Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06515/) (2019)
- [On the detection of synthetic images generated by diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00680/) (2022)
- [Media Forensics and DeepFakes: an overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06564/) (2020)
- [Projected GANs Converge Faster](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01007/) (2021)
- [Diffusion-GAN: Training GANs with Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02262/) (2022)
- [Are GAN generated images easy to detect? A critical analysis of the state-of-the-art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02617/) (2021)
- [Intriguing properties of synthetic images: from generative adversarial networks to diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06408/) (2023)
- [Towards the Detection of Diffusion Model Deepfakes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14571/) (2022)
- [Fusing Global and Local Features for Generalized AI-Synthesized Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13964/) (2022)
- [Detecting GAN-generated Images by Orthogonal Training of Multiple CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02246/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Towards Understanding Unsafe Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12581/) (2024)
- [A Large-scale Universal Evaluation Benchmark For Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09181/) (2024)
- [Landscape More Secure Than Portrait? Zooming Into the Directionality of Digital Images With Security Implications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15206/) (2024)
- [Could AI Trace and Explain the Origins of AI-Generated Images and Text?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04279/) (2025)
- [Deepfakes: we need to re-think the concept of "real" images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21864/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Video and Image Processing (VIP) Cup is a student competition that takes place each year at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing. The 2022 IEEE VIP Cup asked undergraduate students to develop a system capable of distinguishing pristine images from generated ones. The interest in this topic stems from the incredible advances in the AI-based generation of visual data, with tools that allows the synthesis of highly realistic images and videos. While this opens up a large number of new opportunities, it also undermines the trustworthiness of media content and fosters the spread of disinformation on the internet. Recently there was strong concern about the generation of extremely realistic images by means of editing software that includes the recent technology on diffusion models. In this context, there is a need to develop robust and automatic tools for synthetic image detection.