They look deceptively real, but they are made by computers: so-called deep-fake images are generated by machine learning algorithms, and humans are pretty much unable to distinguish them from real photos. Researchers at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Cluster of Excellence “Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries” (Casa) have developed a new method for efficiently identifying deep-fake images. To this end, they analyze the objects in the frequency domain, an established signal processing technique.
Deep-fake images — a portmanteau word from “deep learning” for machine learning and “fake” — are generated with the help of computer models, so-called Generative Adversarial Networks, GANs for short. Two algorithms work together in these networks: the first algorithm creates random images based on certain input data. The second algorithm needs to decide whether the image is a fake or not. If the image is found to be a fake, the second algorithm gives the first algorithm the command to revise the image — until it no longer recognizes it as a fake.
In recent years, this technique has helped make deep-fake images more and more authentic. On the website http://www.whichfaceisreal.com, users can check if they’re able to distinguish fakes from original photos. “In the era of fake news, it can be a problem if users don’t have the ability to distinguish computer-generated images from originals,” says Professor Thorsten Holz from the Chair for Systems Security.
The analysis has shown that images generated by GANs exhibit artifacts in the high-frequency range. For example, a typical grid structure emerges in the frequency representation of fake images. “Our experiments showed that these artifacts do not only occur in GAN generated images. They are a structural problem of all deep learning algorithms,” explains Joel Frank from the Chair for Systems Security. “We assume that the artifacts described in our study will always tell us whether the image is a deep-fake image created by machine learning,” adds Frank.
See the full source from Ruhr-University Bochum on Science Daily.
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