X-Transfer: A Transfer Learning-Based Framework for Robust GAN-Generated Fake Image Detection

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have remarkably advanced in diverse domains, especially image generation and editing. However, the misuse of GANs for generating deceptive images raises significant security concerns, including face replacement and fake accounts, which have gained widespread attention. Consequently, there is an urgent need for effective detection methods to distinguish between real and fake images. Some of the current research centers around the application of transfer learning. Nevertheless, it encounters challenges such as knowledge forgetting from the original dataset and inadequate performance when dealing with imbalanced data during training. To alleviate the above issues, this paper introduces a novel GAN-generated image detection algorithm called X-Transfer. This model enhances transfer learning by utilizing two sibling neural networks that employ interleaved parallel gradient transmission. This approach also effectively mitigates the problem of excessive knowledge forgetting. In addition, we combine AUC loss term and cross-entropy loss to enhance the model's performance comprehensively. The AUC loss approximates the AUC metric using WMW statistics, ensuring differentiability and improving the performance of traditional AUC evaluation. We carry out comprehensive experiments on multiple facial image datasets. The results show that our model outperforms the general transferring approach, and the best accuracy achieves 99.04%, which is increased by approximately 10%. Furthermore, we demonstrate excellent performance on non-face datasets, validating its generality and broader application prospects.