# Exploiting the Final Component of Generator Architectures for AI-Generated Image Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20461 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20461/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [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)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [DINOv3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10104/) (2025)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02905/) (2024)
- [Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17811/) (2025)
- [Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18869/) (2024)
- [Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06525/) (2024)
- [Autoregressive Image Generation without Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11838/) (2024)
- [Scaling up GANs for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05511/) (2023)
- [Infinity: Scaling Bitwise AutoRegressive Modeling for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04431/) (2024)
- [Forgery-aware Adaptive Transformer for Generalizable Synthetic Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16649/) (2023)
- [HiDream-I1: A High-Efficient Image Generative Foundation Model with Sparse Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22705/) (2025)
- [DiffusionSat: A Generative Foundation Model for Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03606/) (2023)
- [PixelFlow: Pixel-Space Generative Models with Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07963/) (2025)
- [CogView3: Finer and Faster Text-to-Image Generation via Relay Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05121/) (2024)
- [A Bias-Free Training Paradigm for More General AI-generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17671/) (2024)
- [FLUX: Fast Software-based Communication Overlap On GPUs Through Kernel Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06858/) (2024)
- [From Reflection to Perfection: Scaling Inference-Time Optimization for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Reflection Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16080/) (2025)
- [Real-Time Deepfake Detection in the Real-World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09398/) (2024)
- [Deepfake Network Architecture Attribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13843/) (2022)
- [JetFormer: An Autoregressive Generative Model of Raw Images and Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19722/) (2024)
- [FakeBench: Probing Explainable Fake Image Detection via Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13306/) (2024)
- [How to Trace Latent Generative Model Generated Images without Artificial Watermark?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13360/) (2024)
- [Personalized Image Generation with Deep Generative Models: A Decade Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13081/) (2025)
- [Kandinsky 3.0 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03511/) (2023)
- [Single-Model Attribution of Generative Models Through Final-Layer Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06210/) (2023)
- [Detecting Origin Attribution for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19653/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [LoRC: Detecting AI-Generated Images via Low-Rank Collapse in Semantic Residuals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20882/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the rapid proliferation of powerful image generators, accurate detection of AI-generated images has become essential for maintaining a trustworthy online environment. However, existing deepfake detectors often generalize poorly to images produced by unseen generators. Notably, despite being trained under vastly different paradigms, such as diffusion or autoregressive modeling, many modern image generators share common final architectural components that serve as the last stage for converting intermediate representations into images. Motivated by this insight, we propose to "contaminate" real images using the generator's final component and train a detector to distinguish them from the original real images. We further introduce a taxonomy based on generators' final components and categorize 21 widely used generators accordingly, enabling a comprehensive investigation of our method's generalization capability. Using only 100 samples from each of three representative categories, our detector-fine-tuned on the DINOv3 backbone-achieves an average accuracy of 98.83% across 22 testing sets from unseen generators.