A Theoretical Analysis of Detecting Large Model-Generated Time Series

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hou, Junji, Zhao, Junzhou, Zhang, Shuo, Wang, Pinghui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hou, Junji
Zhao, Junzhou
Zhang, Shuo
Wang, Pinghui
author_facet Hou, Junji
Zhao, Junzhou
Zhang, Shuo
Wang, Pinghui
contents Motivated by the increasing risks of data misuse and fabrication, we investigate the problem of identifying synthetic time series generated by Time-Series Large Models (TSLMs) in this work. While there are extensive researches on detecting model generated text, we find that these existing methods are not applicable to time series data due to the fundamental modality difference, as time series usually have lower information density and smoother probability distributions than text data, which limit the discriminative power of token-based detectors. To address this issue, we examine the subtle distributional differences between real and model-generated time series and propose the contraction hypothesis, which states that model-generated time series, unlike real ones, exhibit progressively decreasing uncertainty under recursive forecasting. We formally prove this hypothesis under theoretical assumptions on model behavior and time series structure. Model-generated time series exhibit progressively concentrated distributions under recursive forecasting, leading to uncertainty contraction. We provide empirical validation of the hypothesis across diverse datasets. Building on this insight, we introduce the Uncertainty Contraction Estimator (UCE), a white-box detector that aggregates uncertainty metrics over successive prefixes to identify TSLM-generated time series. Extensive experiments on 32 datasets show that UCE consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, offering a reliable and generalizable solution for detecting model-generated time series.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_07104
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Theoretical Analysis of Detecting Large Model-Generated Time Series
Hou, Junji
Zhao, Junzhou
Zhang, Shuo
Wang, Pinghui
Artificial Intelligence
Motivated by the increasing risks of data misuse and fabrication, we investigate the problem of identifying synthetic time series generated by Time-Series Large Models (TSLMs) in this work. While there are extensive researches on detecting model generated text, we find that these existing methods are not applicable to time series data due to the fundamental modality difference, as time series usually have lower information density and smoother probability distributions than text data, which limit the discriminative power of token-based detectors. To address this issue, we examine the subtle distributional differences between real and model-generated time series and propose the contraction hypothesis, which states that model-generated time series, unlike real ones, exhibit progressively decreasing uncertainty under recursive forecasting. We formally prove this hypothesis under theoretical assumptions on model behavior and time series structure. Model-generated time series exhibit progressively concentrated distributions under recursive forecasting, leading to uncertainty contraction. We provide empirical validation of the hypothesis across diverse datasets. Building on this insight, we introduce the Uncertainty Contraction Estimator (UCE), a white-box detector that aggregates uncertainty metrics over successive prefixes to identify TSLM-generated time series. Extensive experiments on 32 datasets show that UCE consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, offering a reliable and generalizable solution for detecting model-generated time series.
title A Theoretical Analysis of Detecting Large Model-Generated Time Series
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07104