# A Sanity Check for AI-generated Image Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.19435 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19435/

## Key facts

- Cited by 189 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 50 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [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)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (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)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (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)
- [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)
- [Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12877/) (2020)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7766/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.08415/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [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)
- [StarGAN: Unified Generative Adversarial Networks for Multi-Domain Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09020/) (2017)
- [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)
- [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)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 189)

- [OpenS2V-Nexus: A Detailed Benchmark and Million-Scale Dataset for Subject-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20292/) (2025)
- [Spot the Fake: Large Multimodal Model-Based Synthetic Image Detection with Artifact Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14905/) (2025)
- [A Bias-Free Training Paradigm for More General AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17671/) (2024)
- [LEGION: Learning to Ground and Explain for Synthetic Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15264/) (2025)
- [Dual Data Alignment Makes AI-Generated Image Detector Easier Generalizable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14359/) (2025)
- [Any-Resolution AI-Generated Image Detection by Spectral Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19417/) (2024)
- [LOKI: A Comprehensive Synthetic Data Detection Benchmark using Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09732/) (2024)
- [Is Artificial Intelligence Generated Image Detection a Solved Problem?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12335/) (2025)
- [CO-SPY: Combining Semantic and Pixel Features to Detect Synthetic Images by AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18286/) (2025)
- [SPEED: Scalable, Precise, and Efficient Concept Erasure for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07392/) (2025)
- [Ivy-Fake: A Unified Explainable Framework and Benchmark for Image and Video AIGC Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00979/) (2025)
- [Easier Painting Than Thinking: Can Text-to-Image Models Set the Stage, but Not Direct the Play?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03516/) (2025)
- [AIGI-Holmes: Towards Explainable and Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection via Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02664/) (2025)
- [All Patches Matter, More Patches Better: Enhance AI-Generated Image Detection via Panoptic Patch Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01396/) (2025)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Ideal and Real-world Evaluation: Benchmarking AI-Generated Image Detection in Challenging Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09172/) (2025)
- [Veritas: Generalizable Deepfake Detection via Pattern-Aware Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21048/) (2025)
- [ForensicHub: A Unified Benchmark & Codebase for All-Domain Fake Image Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11003/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Classifier-Free Guidance via Dynamic Low-Confidence Masking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20199/) (2025)
- [Toward Generalizable Forgery Detection and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21210/) (2025)
- [Seeing Before Reasoning: A Unified Framework for Generalizable and Explainable Fake Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25502/) (2025)
- [NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Robust AI-Generated Image Detection in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11487/) (2026)
- [Zooming In on Fakes: A Novel Dataset for Localized AI-Generated Image Detection with Forgery Amplification Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11922/) (2025)
- [Breaking Latent Prior Bias in Detectors for Generalizable AIGC Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00874/) (2025)
- [Survey on AI-Generated Media Detection: From Non-MLLM to MLLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05240/) (2025)
- [Methods and Trends in Detecting AI-Generated Images: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15176/) (2025)
- [Dual Frequency Branch Framework with Reconstructed Sliding Windows Attention for AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15253/) (2025)
- [FakeScope: Large Multimodal Expert Model for Transparent AI-Generated Image Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24267/) (2025)
- [CrossLMM: Decoupling Long Video Sequences from LMMs via Dual Cross-Attention Mechanisms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17020/) (2025)
- [VideoVeritas: AI-Generated Video Detection via Perception Pretext Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08828/) (2026)
- [Navigating the Challenges of AI-Generated Image Detection in the Wild: What Truly Matters?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10236/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the rapid development of generative models, discerning AI-generated content has evoked increasing attention from both industry and academia. In this paper, we conduct a sanity check on "whether the task of AI-generated image detection has been solved". To start with, we present Chameleon dataset, consisting AIgenerated images that are genuinely challenging for human perception. To quantify the generalization of existing methods, we evaluate 9 off-the-shelf AI-generated image detectors on Chameleon dataset. Upon analysis, almost all models classify AI-generated images as real ones. Later, we propose AIDE (AI-generated Image DEtector with Hybrid Features), which leverages multiple experts to simultaneously extract visual artifacts and noise patterns. Specifically, to capture the high-level semantics, we utilize CLIP to compute the visual embedding. This effectively enables the model to discern AI-generated images based on semantics or contextual information; Secondly, we select the highest frequency patches and the lowest frequency patches in the image, and compute the low-level patchwise features, aiming to detect AI-generated images by low-level artifacts, for example, noise pattern, anti-aliasing, etc. While evaluating on existing benchmarks, for example, AIGCDetectBenchmark and GenImage, AIDE achieves +3.5% and +4.6% improvements to state-of-the-art methods, and on our proposed challenging Chameleon benchmarks, it also achieves the promising results, despite this problem for detecting AI-generated images is far from being solved.