Semantic Manipulation Localization

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Tan, Zhenshan, Lu, Chenhan, Huang, Yuxiang, He, Ziwen, Zhang, Xiang, Sha, Yuzhe, Chen, Xianyi, Chen, Tianrun, Fu, Zhangjie
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Tan, Zhenshan
Lu, Chenhan
Huang, Yuxiang
He, Ziwen
Zhang, Xiang
Sha, Yuzhe
Chen, Xianyi
Chen, Tianrun
Fu, Zhangjie
author_facet Tan, Zhenshan
Lu, Chenhan
Huang, Yuxiang
He, Ziwen
Zhang, Xiang
Sha, Yuzhe
Chen, Xianyi
Chen, Tianrun
Fu, Zhangjie
contents Image Manipulation Localization (IML) aims to identify edited regions in an image. However, with the increasing use of modern image editing and generative models, many manipulations no longer exhibit obvious low-level artifacts. Instead, they often involve subtle but meaning-altering edits to an object's attributes, state, or relationships while remaining highly consistent with the surrounding content. This makes conventional IML methods less effective because they mainly rely on artifact detection rather than semantic sensitivity. To address this issue, we introduce Semantic Manipulation Localization (SML), a new task that focuses on localizing subtle semantic edits that significantly change image interpretation. We further construct a dedicated fine-grained benchmark for SML using a semantics-driven manipulation pipeline with pixel-level annotations. Based on this task, we propose TRACE (Targeted Reasoning of Attributed Cognitive Edits), an end-to-end framework that models semantic sensitivity through three progressively coupled components: semantic anchoring, semantic perturbation sensing, and semantic-constrained reasoning. Specifically, TRACE first identifies semantically meaningful regions that support image understanding, then injects perturbation-sensitive frequency cues to capture subtle edits under strong visual consistency, and finally verifies candidate regions through joint reasoning over semantic content and semantic scope. Extensive experiments show that TRACE consistently outperforms existing IML methods on our benchmark and produces more complete, compact, and semantically coherent localization results. These results demonstrate the necessity of moving beyond artifact-based localization and provide a new direction for image forensics in complex semantic editing scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_10132
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semantic Manipulation Localization
Tan, Zhenshan
Lu, Chenhan
Huang, Yuxiang
He, Ziwen
Zhang, Xiang
Sha, Yuzhe
Chen, Xianyi
Chen, Tianrun
Fu, Zhangjie
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Image Manipulation Localization (IML) aims to identify edited regions in an image. However, with the increasing use of modern image editing and generative models, many manipulations no longer exhibit obvious low-level artifacts. Instead, they often involve subtle but meaning-altering edits to an object's attributes, state, or relationships while remaining highly consistent with the surrounding content. This makes conventional IML methods less effective because they mainly rely on artifact detection rather than semantic sensitivity. To address this issue, we introduce Semantic Manipulation Localization (SML), a new task that focuses on localizing subtle semantic edits that significantly change image interpretation. We further construct a dedicated fine-grained benchmark for SML using a semantics-driven manipulation pipeline with pixel-level annotations. Based on this task, we propose TRACE (Targeted Reasoning of Attributed Cognitive Edits), an end-to-end framework that models semantic sensitivity through three progressively coupled components: semantic anchoring, semantic perturbation sensing, and semantic-constrained reasoning. Specifically, TRACE first identifies semantically meaningful regions that support image understanding, then injects perturbation-sensitive frequency cues to capture subtle edits under strong visual consistency, and finally verifies candidate regions through joint reasoning over semantic content and semantic scope. Extensive experiments show that TRACE consistently outperforms existing IML methods on our benchmark and produces more complete, compact, and semantically coherent localization results. These results demonstrate the necessity of moving beyond artifact-based localization and provide a new direction for image forensics in complex semantic editing scenarios.
title Semantic Manipulation Localization
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10132