# LaRE2: Latent Reconstruction Error Based Method for Diffusion-Generated Image Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17465 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17465/

## Key facts

- Cited by 47 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 33 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Thinking in Frequency: Face Forgery Detection by Mining Frequency-aware Clues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09355/) (2020)
- [Leveraging Frequency Analysis for Deep Fake Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08685/) (2020)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [Face X-ray for More General Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13458/) (2019)
- [Emergent Correspondence from Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03881/) (2023)
- [DIRE for Diffusion-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09295/) (2023)
- [GenImage: A Million-Scale Benchmark for Detecting AI-Generated Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08571/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Unleashing Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Visual Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02153/) (2023)
- [Global Texture Enhancement for Fake Face Detection in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00133/) (2020)
- [Text-to-Image Diffusion Models are Zero-Shot Classifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15233/) (2023)
- [Detecting GAN generated Fake Images using Co-occurrence Matrices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06836/) (2019)
- [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)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Orthogonal Subspace Decomposition for Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15633/) (2024)
- [Improving Synthetic Image Detection Towards Generalization: An Image Transformation Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06741/) (2024)
- [FIRE: Robust Detection of Diffusion-Generated Images via Frequency-Guided Reconstruction Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07140/) (2024)
- [On Learning Multi-Modal Forgery Representation for Diffusion Generated Video Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23623/) (2024)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Ideal and Real-world Evaluation: Benchmarking AI-Generated Image Detection in Challenging Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09172/) (2025)
- [Robust CLIP-Based Detector for Exposing Diffusion Model-Generated Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12908/) (2024)
- [DNA: Uncovering Universal Latent Forgery Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22515/) (2026)
- [Few-Shot Learner Generalizes Across AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08763/) (2025)
- [Is this Generated Person Existed in Real-world? Fine-grained Detecting and Calibrating Abnormal Human-body](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14205/) (2024)
- [LOTA: Bit-Planes Guided AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14230/) (2025)
- [Explainable Synthetic Image Detection through Diffusion Timestep Ensembling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06201/) (2025)
- [Evolving from Single-modal to Multi-modal Facial Deepfake Detection: Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06965/) (2024)
- [Few-Shot Synthetic Image Attribution: Identifying Unseen Generators with Limited Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25682/) (2025)
- [Are Images Indistinguishable to Humans Also Indistinguishable to Classifiers?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18029/) (2024)
- [LATTE: Latent Trajectory Embedding for Diffusion-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03054/) (2025)
- [The Cat and Mouse Game: The Ongoing Arms Race Between Diffusion Models and Detection Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18866/) (2024)
- [SFLD: Reducing the content bias for AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17105/) (2025)
- [Beyond Semantic Features: Pixel-level Mapping for Generalized AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17350/) (2025)
- [Layer Consistency Matters: Elegant Latent Transition Discrepancy for Generalizable Synthetic Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10598/) (2026)
- [A Large-scale Universal Evaluation Benchmark For Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09181/) (2024)
- [Noise-Informed Diffusion-Generated Image Detection with Anomaly Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16743/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Epistemic Uncertainty with Asymmetric Learning for Diffusion-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14625/) (2026)
- [Attribution as Retrieval: Model-Agnostic AI-Generated Image Attribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10583/) (2026)
- [Time Step Generating: A Universal Synthesized Deepfake Image Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11016/) (2024)
- [SegSub: Evaluating Robustness to Knowledge Conflicts and Hallucinations in Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14908/) (2025)
- [Leveraging Failed Samples: A Few-Shot and Training-Free Framework for Generalized Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09475/) (2025)
- [Semantic-Aware Reconstruction Error for Detecting AI-Generated Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09487/) (2025)
- [Who Made This? Fake Detection and Source Attribution with Diffusion Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27602/) (2025)
- [Aggregating Diverse Cue Experts for AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08790/) (2026)
- [A Difference-in-Difference Approach to Detecting AI-Generated Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23732/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The evolution of Diffusion Models has dramatically improved image generation quality, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate between real and generated images. This development, while impressive, also raises significant privacy and security concerns. In response to this, we propose a novel Latent REconstruction error guided feature REfinement method (LaRE^2) for detecting the diffusion-generated images. We come up with the Latent Reconstruction Error (LaRE), the first reconstruction-error based feature in the latent space for generated image detection. LaRE surpasses existing methods in terms of feature extraction efficiency while preserving crucial cues required to differentiate between the real and the fake. To exploit LaRE, we propose an Error-Guided feature REfinement module (EGRE), which can refine the image feature guided by LaRE to enhance the discriminativeness of the feature. Our EGRE utilizes an align-then-refine mechanism, which effectively refines the image feature for generated-image detection from both spatial and channel perspectives. Extensive experiments on the large-scale GenImage benchmark demonstrate the superiority of our LaRE^2, which surpasses the best SoTA method by up to 11.9%/12.1% average ACC/AP across 8 different image generators. LaRE also surpasses existing methods in terms of feature extraction cost, delivering an impressive speed enhancement of 8 times. Code is available.