mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

FACT: A Forensic Agent with Compiled Tool-Use Trajectories for AI-Generated Image Detection

arXiv 2609.05876 ↗First posted 5 Sep 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

AI-generated image detection is increasingly open-world: new image generators produce highly realistic images that make visual artifacts harder to identify. Existing detectors usually rely on a fixed set of forensic cues, so a detector that works well for one generator family may fail on another. We introduce FACT (Forensic Agent with Compiled Tool-use Trajectories), which learns an image-conditioned tool-use policy for forensic analysis. Instead of applying a fixed detector, FACT decides which forensic tools to call, interprets the returned evidence, and stops when sufficient evidence has been collected. FACT follows an Evolve--Distill--Refine pipeline: it evolves an execution-verified forensic skill, compiles the skill into action--observation tool-use trajectories, distills them into a compact agent, and refines the policy with cost-aware GRPO. Across two internal and four public benchmarks, FACT achieves the best performance among all compared methods, including on recent unseen generators, deepfakes, and manipulated images.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 20 of its 35 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Sep 2026.

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20 of 35 references.

References · 20

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  2. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 6,013
  3. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  4. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  5. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,442
  6. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 876
  7. 2019CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot... for nowcited by 847
  8. 2023Towards Universal Fake Image Detectors that Generalize Across Generative Modelscited by 490
  9. 2020Global Texture Enhancement for Fake Face Detection in the Wildcited by 220
  10. 2015Massive Online Crowdsourced Study of Subjective and Objective Picture Qualitycited by 209
  11. 2025SkillWeaver: Web Agents can Self-Improve by Discovering and Honing Skillscited by 192
  12. 2026SkillOpt: Executive Strategy for Self-Evolving Agent Skillscited by 148
8 more
  1. 2024SIDA: Social Media Image Deepfake Detection, Localization and Explanation with Large Multimodal Modelcited by 108
  2. 2025Spot the Fake: Large Multimodal Model-Based Synthetic Image Detection with Artifact Explanationcited by 68
  3. 2024Community Forensics: Using Thousands of Generators to Train Fake Image Detectorscited by 50
  4. 2023Rethinking the Up-Sampling Operations in CNN-based Generative Network for Generalizable Deepfake Detectioncited by 41
  5. 2025Ivy-Fake: A Unified Explainable Framework and Benchmark for Image and Video AIGC Detectioncited by 34
  6. 2026Venus-DeFakerOne: Unified Fake Image Detection & Localizationcited by 8
  7. 2025Self-Supervised AI-Generated Image Detection: A Camera Metadata Perspectivecited by 6
  8. 2026ReAlign: Generalizable Image Forgery Detection via Reasoning-Aligned Representationcited by 3

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  1. 2025From Evidence to Verdict: An Agent-Based Forensic Framework for AI-Generated Image Detection
  2. 2026Perception, Verdict, and Evolution: Hindsight-Driven Self-Refining Forensics Agent for AI-Generated Image Detection
  3. 2026Agentic Tool-Augmented Reasoning for Explainable Image Forgery Detection
  4. 2025REVEAL: Reasoning-Enhanced Forensic Evidence Analysis for Explainable AI-Generated Image Detection
  5. 2026Dissecting Agentic Forensics: The Role of Triage, Prompting, and Evidence Arbitration in Open-World Fake Image Detection
  6. 2026SafeGuard: A Multi-Agent Perception-Reasoning Framework for Social-Risk AI-Generated Video Detection
  7. 2024A Bias-Free Training Paradigm for More General AI-generated Image Detection
  8. 2026EviScene: Beyond "Is It AI?" for Agentic Image Factuality Assessment