# The Adversarial AI-Art: Understanding, Generation, Detection, and Benchmarking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.14581 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14581/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 49 of its 99 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [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)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [Scaling Language Models: Methods, Analysis & Insights from Training Gopher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11446/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [Improved Techniques for Training Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09011/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot... for now](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11035/) (2019)
- [Maximum Likelihood Training of Score-Based Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09258/) (2021)
- [Celeb-DF: A Large-scale Challenging Dataset for DeepFake Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12962/) (2019)
- [Towards Universal Fake Image Detectors that Generalize Across Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10174/) (2023)
- [DIRE for Diffusion-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09295/) (2023)
- [DiffusionDB: A Large-scale Prompt Gallery Dataset for Text-to-Image Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14896/) (2022)
- [GenImage: A Million-Scale Benchmark for Detecting AI-Generated Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08571/) (2023)
- [Exposing DeepFake Videos By Detecting Face Warping Artifacts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00656/) (2018)
- [DeepFakes: a New Threat to Face Recognition? Assessment and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08685/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [A Critical Assessment of Modern Generative Models' Ability to Replicate Artistic Styles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15856/) (2025)
- [Gen-Review: A Large-scale Dataset of AI-Generated (and Human-written) Peer Reviews](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21192/) (2025)
- [AI-Generated Image Detectors Overrely on Global Artifacts: Evidence from Inpainting Exchange](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00192/) (2026)
- [VendorBench-100: A Unified Cross-Paradigm Benchmark for Deepfake Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06254/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative AI models can produce high-quality images based on text prompts. The generated images often appear indistinguishable from images generated by conventional optical photography devices or created by human artists (i.e., real images). While the outstanding performance of such generative models is generally well received, security concerns arise. For instance, such image generators could be used to facilitate fraud or scam schemes, generate and spread misinformation, or produce fabricated artworks. In this paper, we present a systematic attempt at understanding and detecting AI-generated images (AI-art) in adversarial scenarios. First, we collect and share a dataset of real images and their corresponding artificial counterparts generated by four popular AI image generators. The dataset, named ARIA, contains over 140K images in five categories: artworks (painting), social media images, news photos, disaster scenes, and anime pictures. This dataset can be used as a foundation to support future research on adversarial AI-art. Next, we present a user study that employs the ARIA dataset to evaluate if real-world users can distinguish with or without reference images. In a benchmarking study, we further evaluate if state-of-the-art open-source and commercial AI image detectors can effectively identify the images in the ARIA dataset. Finally, we present a ResNet-50 classifier and evaluate its accuracy and transferability on the ARIA dataset.