# Big Brother is Watching: Proactive Deepfake Detection via Learnable Hidden Face

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11309 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11309/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [StarGAN v2: Diverse Image Synthesis for Multiple Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01865/) (2019)
- [VGGFace2: A dataset for recognising faces across pose and age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.08092/) (2017)
- [Thinking in Frequency: Face Forgery Detection by Mining Frequency-aware Clues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09355/) (2020)
- [Detecting Deepfakes with Self-Blended Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08376/) (2022)
- [Lips Don't Lie: A Generalisable and Robust Approach to Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07657/) (2020)
- [SimSwap: An Efficient Framework For High Fidelity Face Swapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06340/) (2021)
- [FaceShifter: Towards High Fidelity And Occlusion Aware Face Swapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13457/) (2019)
- [Artificial Fingerprinting for Generative Models: Rooting Deepfake Attribution in Training Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08457/) (2020)
- [Frequency-aware Discriminative Feature Learning Supervised by Single-Center Loss for Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09096/) (2021)
- [Implicit Identity Leakage: The Stumbling Block to Improving Deepfake Detection Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14457/) (2022)
- [EditGuard: Versatile Image Watermarking for Tamper Localization and Copyright Protection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08883/) (2023)
- [Talk-to-Edit: Fine-Grained Facial Editing via Dialog](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04425/) (2021)
- [Detecting and Grounding Multi-Modal Media Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02556/) (2023)
- [Disrupting Deepfakes: Adversarial Attacks Against Conditional Image Translation Networks and Facial Manipulation Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01279/) (2020)
- [CMUA-Watermark: A Cross-Model Universal Adversarial Watermark for Combating Deepfakes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10872/) (2021)
- [FakeTagger: Robust Safeguards against DeepFake Dissemination via Provenance Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09869/) (2020)
- [Voice-Face Homogeneity Tells Deepfake](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02195/) (2022)
- [SepMark: Deep Separable Watermarking for Unified Source Tracing and Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06321/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Facial Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15859/) (2024)
- [MobileFaceSwap: A Lightweight Framework for Video Face Swapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03808/) (2022)
- [Initiative Defense against Facial Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10098/) (2021)
- [Proactive Image Manipulation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15880/) (2022)
- [MaLP: Manipulation Localization Using a Proactive Scheme](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16976/) (2023)
- [Password-conditioned Anonymization and Deanonymization with Face Identity Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11759/) (2019)
- [Defending against GAN-based Deepfake Attacks via Transformation-aware Adversarial Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07421/) (2020)
- [MMNet: Multi-Collaboration and Multi-Supervision Network for Sequential Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02733/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Performance Decay in Deepfake Detection: The Limitations of Training on Outdated Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07009/) (2025)
- [LoRA Patching: Exposing the Fragility of Proactive Defenses against Deepfakes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03747/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As deepfake technologies continue to advance, passive detection methods struggle to generalize with various forgery manipulations and datasets. Proactive defense techniques have been actively studied with the primary aim of preventing deepfake operation effectively working. In this paper, we aim to bridge the gap between passive detection and proactive defense, and seek to solve the detection problem utilizing a proactive methodology. Inspired by several watermarking-based forensic methods, we explore a novel detection framework based on the concept of ``hiding a learnable face within a face''. Specifically, relying on a semi-fragile invertible steganography network, a secret template image is embedded into a host image imperceptibly, acting as an indicator monitoring for any malicious image forgery when being restored by the inverse steganography process. Instead of being manually specified, the secret template is optimized during training to resemble a neutral facial appearance, just like a ``big brother'' hidden in the image to be protected. By incorporating a self-blending mechanism and robustness learning strategy with a simulative transmission channel, a robust detector is built to accurately distinguish if the steganographic image is maliciously tampered or benignly processed. Finally, extensive experiments conducted on multiple datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach over competing passive and proactive detection methods.