# Explainable Deepfake Detection with RL Enhanced Self-Blended Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15624 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15624/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10479/) (2025)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06749/) (2025)
- [Celeb-DF: A Large-scale Challenging Dataset for DeepFake Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12962/) (2019)
- [VLM-R1: A Stable and Generalizable R1-style Large Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07615/) (2025)
- [Video-R1: Reinforcing Video Reasoning in MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21776/) (2025)
- [Face X-ray for More General Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13458/) (2019)
- [Detecting Deepfakes with Self-Blended Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08376/) (2022)
- [LMM-R1: Empowering 3B LMMs with Strong Reasoning Abilities Through Two-Stage Rule-Based RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07536/) (2025)
- [The Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC) Preview Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08854/) (2019)
- [UCF: Uncovering Common Features for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13949/) (2023)
- [DeepfakeBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark of Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01426/) (2023)
- [Transcending Forgery Specificity with Latent Space Augmentation for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11278/) (2023)
- [Orthogonal Subspace Decomposition for Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15633/) (2024)
- [Boosting the Generalization and Reasoning of Vision Language Models with Curriculum Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07065/) (2025)
- [Common Sense Reasoning for Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00126/) (2024)
- [Can We Leave Deepfake Data Behind in Training Deepfake Detector?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17052/) (2024)
- [Exposing the Deception: Uncovering More Forgery Clues for Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01786/) (2024)
- [Towards General Visual-Linguistic Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16545/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Vision-Language Model in Face Forensics: Multi-Modal Interpretable Forged Face Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20188/) (2025)
- [X2-DFD: A framework for eXplainable and eXtendable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06126/) (2024)
- [Fake It till You Make It: Curricular Dynamic Forgery Augmentations towards General Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14444/) (2024)
- [Unlocking the Capabilities of Large Vision-Language Models for Generalizable and Explainable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14853/) (2025)
- [MLLM-Enhanced Face Forgery Detection: A Vision-Language Fusion Solution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02013/) (2025)
- [VLForgery Face Triad: Detection, Localization and Attribution via Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06142/) (2025)
- [Towards Interactive Deepfake Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01164/) (2025)
- [Trident: Detecting Face Forgeries with Adversarial Triplet Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23189/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [VIGIL: Part-Grounded Structured Reasoning for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21526/) (2026)
- [ForensicZoom: Adaptive Visual Inspection with Multimodal LLMs for Industrial-Grade Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31661/) (2026)
- [Not Every Cue Is Evidence: Cue Supportability for Forensic Distillation in Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16452/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Most prior deepfake detection methods lack explainable outputs. With the growing interest in multimodal large language models (MLLMs), researchers have started exploring their use in interpretable deepfake detection. However, a major obstacle in applying MLLMs to this task is the scarcity of high-quality datasets with detailed forgery attribution annotations, as textual annotation is both costly and challenging - particularly for high-fidelity forged images or videos. Moreover, multiple studies have shown that reinforcement learning (RL) can substantially enhance performance in visual tasks, especially in improving cross-domain generalization. To facilitate the adoption of mainstream MLLM frameworks in deepfake detection with reduced annotation cost, and to investigate the potential of RL in this context, we propose an automated Chain-of-Thought (CoT) data generation framework based on Self-Blended Images, along with an RL-enhanced deepfake detection framework. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our CoT data construction pipeline, tailored reward mechanism, and feedback-driven synthetic data generation approach. Our method achieves performance competitive with state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches across multiple cross-dataset benchmarks. Implementation details are available at https://github.com/deon1219/rlsbi.