# Diffusion Facial Forgery Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.15859 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15859/

## Key facts

- Cited by 41 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 67 of its 82 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 67)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [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)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14818/) (2021)
- [VoxCeleb2: Deep Speaker Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05622/) (2018)
- [CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot... for now](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11035/) (2019)
- [Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14822/) (2021)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [MaskGAN: Towards Diverse and Interactive Facial Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11922/) (2019)
- [Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models with Exponential Integrator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13902/) (2022)
- [Thinking in Frequency: Face Forgery Detection by Mining Frequency-aware Clues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09355/) (2020)
- [Tackling the Generative Learning Trilemma with Denoising Diffusion GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07804/) (2021)
- [Leveraging Frequency Analysis for Deep Fake Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08685/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [SIDA: Social Media Image Deepfake Detection, Localization and Explanation with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04292/) (2024)
- [X2-DFD: A framework for eXplainable and eXtendable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06126/) (2024)
- [FSFM: A Generalizable Face Security Foundation Model via Self-Supervised Facial Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12032/) (2024)
- [Beyond Deepfake Images: Detecting AI-Generated Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15955/) (2024)
- [From Specificity to Generality: Revisiting Generalizable Artifacts in Detecting Face Deepfakes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04827/) (2025)
- [Forensics-Bench: A Comprehensive Forgery Detection Benchmark Suite for Large Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15024/) (2025)
- [VLForgery Face Triad: Detection, Localization and Attribution via Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06142/) (2025)
- [AI-GenBench: A New Ongoing Benchmark for AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20865/) (2025)
- [OpenFake: An Open Dataset and Platform Toward Real-World Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09495/) (2025)
- [The Coherence Trap: When MLLM-Crafted Narratives Exploit Manipulated Visual Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17476/) (2025)
- [Open-Set Deepfake Detection: A Parameter-Efficient Adaptation Method with Forgery Style Mixture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12791/) (2024)
- [Evolving from Single-modal to Multi-modal Facial Deepfake Detection: Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06965/) (2024)
- [Learning Real Facial Concepts for Independent Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04460/) (2025)
- [Semantics-Oriented Multitask Learning for DeepFake Detection: A Joint Embedding Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16305/) (2024)
- [The Cat and Mouse Game: The Ongoing Arms Race Between Diffusion Models and Detection Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18866/) (2024)
- [Bi-Level Optimization for Self-Supervised AI-Generated Face Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22824/) (2025)
- [A Large-scale Universal Evaluation Benchmark For Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09181/) (2024)
- [Self-Supervised Learning for Detecting AI-Generated Faces as Anomalies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02207/) (2025)
- [Model Discrepancy Learning: Synthetic Faces Detection Based on Multi-Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07382/) (2025)
- [Big Brother is Watching: Proactive Deepfake Detection via Learnable Hidden Face](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11309/) (2025)
- [Generalized Design Choices for Deepfake Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21507/) (2025)
- [RCDN: Real-Centered Detection Network for Robust Face Forgery Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12111/) (2026)
- [RealHD: A High-Quality Dataset for Robust Detection of State-of-the-Art AI-Generated Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10546/) (2026)
- [PVLM: Parsing-Aware Vision Language Model with Dynamic Contrastive Learning for Zero-Shot Deepfake Attribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14129/) (2025)
- [Towards Real-World Deepfake Detection: A Diverse In-the-wild Dataset of Forgery Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08067/) (2025)
- [A Dual-Branch CNN for Robust Detection of AI-Generated Facial Forgeries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.24640/) (2025)
- [NeXT-IMDL: Build Benchmark for NeXT-Generation Image Manipulation Detection & Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23374/) (2025)
- [From Masks to Pixels and Meaning: A New Taxonomy, Benchmark, and Metrics for VLM Image Tampering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20193/) (2026)
- [LRD-Net: A Lightweight Real-Centered Detection Network for Cross-Domain Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10862/) (2026)
- [EIB-Net: Entropy-Guided Information Bottleneck for Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29064/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Detecting diffusion-generated images has recently grown into an emerging research area. Existing diffusion-based datasets predominantly focus on general image generation. However, facial forgeries, which pose a more severe social risk, have remained less explored thus far. To address this gap, this paper introduces DiFF, a comprehensive dataset dedicated to face-focused diffusion-generated images. DiFF comprises over 500,000 images that are synthesized using thirteen distinct generation methods under four conditions. In particular, this dataset leverages 30,000 carefully collected textual and visual prompts, ensuring the synthesis of images with both high fidelity and semantic consistency. We conduct extensive experiments on the DiFF dataset via a human test and several representative forgery detection methods. The results demonstrate that the binary detection accuracy of both human observers and automated detectors often falls below 30%, shedding light on the challenges in detecting diffusion-generated facial forgeries. Furthermore, we propose an edge graph regularization approach to effectively enhance the generalization capability of existing detectors.