# ArtiFact: A Large-Scale Dataset with Artificial and Factual Images for Generalizable and Robust Synthetic Image Detection

## TL;DR

This paper introduces ArtiFact, a comprehensive large-scale dataset with diverse synthetic and real images, and proposes a robust detection method that generalizes well to unseen generators and real-world impairments.

## Contribution

The paper presents ArtiFact, a new large-scale dataset for synthetic image detection, and a multi-class classification approach with a filter stride reduction strategy to improve generalization.

## Key findings

- Outperforms other methods by up to 15.08% in accuracy on challenging tests.
- Effectively detects synthetic images from unseen generators.
- Robust against real-world impairments and social platform distortions.

## Abstract

Synthetic image generation has opened up new opportunities but has also created threats in regard to privacy, authenticity, and security. Detecting fake images is of paramount importance to prevent illegal activities, and previous research has shown that generative models leave unique patterns in their synthetic images that can be exploited to detect them. However, the fundamental problem of generalization remains, as even state-of-the-art detectors encounter difficulty when facing generators never seen during training. To assess the generalizability and robustness of synthetic image detectors in the face of real-world impairments, this paper presents a large-scale dataset named ArtiFact, comprising diverse generators, object categories, and real-world challenges. Moreover, the proposed multi-class classification scheme, combined with a filter stride reduction strategy addresses social platform impairments and effectively detects synthetic images from both seen and unseen generators. The proposed solution significantly outperforms other top teams by 8.34% on Test 1, 1.26% on Test 2, and 15.08% on Test 3 in the IEEE VIP Cup challenge at ICIP 2022, as measured by the accuracy metric.