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Main Authors: Das, Dabbrata, Yahan, Mahshar, Zaman, Md Tareq, Bayesh, Md Rishadul
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17877
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author Das, Dabbrata
Yahan, Mahshar
Zaman, Md Tareq
Bayesh, Md Rishadul
author_facet Das, Dabbrata
Yahan, Mahshar
Zaman, Md Tareq
Bayesh, Md Rishadul
contents The rapid advancement of generative models has led to a growing prevalence of highly realistic AI-generated images, posing significant challenges for digital forensics and content authentication. Conventional detection methods mainly rely on deep learning models that extract global features, which often overlook subtle structural inconsistencies and demand substantial computational resources. To address these limitations, we propose a hybrid detection framework that combines a fine-tuned Vision Transformer (ViT) with a novel edge-based image processing module. The edge-based module computes variance from edge-difference maps generated before and after smoothing, exploiting the observation that AI-generated images typically exhibit smoother textures, weaker edges, and reduced noise compared to real images. When applied as a post-processing step on ViT predictions, this module enhances sensitivity to fine-grained structural cues while maintaining computational efficiency. Extensive experiments on the CIFAKE, Artistic, and Custom Curated datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves superior detection performance across all benchmarks, attaining 97.75% accuracy and a 97.77% F1-score on CIFAKE, surpassing widely adopted state-of-the-art models. These results establish the proposed method as a lightweight, interpretable, and effective solution for both still images and video frames, making it highly suitable for real-world applications in automated content verification and digital forensics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_17877
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Edge-Enhanced Vision Transformer Framework for Accurate AI-Generated Image Detection
Das, Dabbrata
Yahan, Mahshar
Zaman, Md Tareq
Bayesh, Md Rishadul
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
The rapid advancement of generative models has led to a growing prevalence of highly realistic AI-generated images, posing significant challenges for digital forensics and content authentication. Conventional detection methods mainly rely on deep learning models that extract global features, which often overlook subtle structural inconsistencies and demand substantial computational resources. To address these limitations, we propose a hybrid detection framework that combines a fine-tuned Vision Transformer (ViT) with a novel edge-based image processing module. The edge-based module computes variance from edge-difference maps generated before and after smoothing, exploiting the observation that AI-generated images typically exhibit smoother textures, weaker edges, and reduced noise compared to real images. When applied as a post-processing step on ViT predictions, this module enhances sensitivity to fine-grained structural cues while maintaining computational efficiency. Extensive experiments on the CIFAKE, Artistic, and Custom Curated datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves superior detection performance across all benchmarks, attaining 97.75% accuracy and a 97.77% F1-score on CIFAKE, surpassing widely adopted state-of-the-art models. These results establish the proposed method as a lightweight, interpretable, and effective solution for both still images and video frames, making it highly suitable for real-world applications in automated content verification and digital forensics.
title Edge-Enhanced Vision Transformer Framework for Accurate AI-Generated Image Detection
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17877