# Towards Generalizable Deepfake Detection via Real Distribution Bias Correction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14005 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14005/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01704/) (2016)
- [Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14808/) (2020)
- [Celeb-DF: A Large-scale Challenging Dataset for DeepFake Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12962/) (2019)
- [Leveraging Frequency Analysis for Deep Fake Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08685/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Exposing Deep Fakes Using Inconsistent Head Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00661/) (2018)
- [Generalizing Face Forgery Detection with High-frequency Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12376/) (2021)
- [SimSwap: An Efficient Framework For High Fidelity Face Swapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06340/) (2021)
- [UCF: Uncovering Common Features for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13949/) (2023)
- [Two-branch Recurrent Network for Isolating Deepfakes in Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03412/) (2020)
- [FakeCatcher: Detection of Synthetic Portrait Videos using Biological Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02212/) (2019)
- [Transcending Forgery Specificity with Latent Space Augmentation for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11278/) (2023)
- [Implicit Identity Leakage: The Stumbling Block to Improving Deepfake Detection Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14457/) (2022)
- [Representative Forgery Mining for Fake Face Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06609/) (2021)
- [Orthogonal Subspace Decomposition for Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15633/) (2024)
- [DiffFace: Diffusion-based Face Swapping with Facial Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13344/) (2022)
- [Towards Open-Set Identity Preserving Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11182/) (2018)
- [CORE: Consistent Representation Learning for Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02749/) (2022)
- [Exposing GAN-generated Faces Using Inconsistent Corneal Specular Highlights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11924/) (2020)
- [Exploiting Style Latent Flows for Generalizing Deepfake Video Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06592/) (2024)
- [AVFF: Audio-Visual Feature Fusion for Video Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02951/) (2024)
- [Generalizing Deepfake Video Detection with Plug-and-Play: Video-Level Blending and Spatiotemporal Adapter Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17065/) (2024)
- [Deepfake Detection: A Comprehensive Survey from the Reliability Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10881/) (2022)
- [Can We Leave Deepfake Data Behind in Training Deepfake Detector?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17052/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To generalize deepfake detectors to future unseen forgeries, most existing methods attempt to simulate the dynamically evolving forgery types using available source domain data. However, predicting an unbounded set of future manipulations from limited prior examples is infeasible. To overcome this limitation, we propose to exploit the invariance of real data from two complementary perspectives: the fixed population distribution of the entire real class and the inherent Gaussianity of individual real images. Building on these properties, we introduce the Real Distribution Bias Correction (RDBC) framework, which consists of two key components: the Real Population Distribution Estimation module and the Distribution-Sampled Feature Whitening module. The former utilizes the independent and identically distributed (iid) property of real samples to derive the normal distribution form of their statistics, from which the distribution parameters can be estimated using limited source domain data. Based on the learned population distribution, the latter utilizes the inherent Gaussianity of real data as a discriminative prior and performs a sampling-based whitening operation to amplify the Gaussianity gap between real and fake samples. Through synergistic coupling of the two modules, our model captures the real-world properties of real samples, thereby enhancing its generalizability to unseen target domains. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RDBC achieves state-of-the-art performance in both in-domain and cross-domain deepfake detection.