Synthetic Face Discrimination via Learned Image Compression

The emergence of deep learning has sparked notable strides in the quality of synthetic media. Yet, as photorealism reaches new heights, the line between generated and authentic images blurs, raising concerns about the dissemination of counterfeit or manipulated content online. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop automated tools capable of effectively distinguishing synthetic images, especially those portraying faces, which is one of the most commonly encountered issues. In this work, we propose a novel approach to synthetic face discrimination, leveraging deep learning-based image compression and predominantly utilizing the quality metrics of an image to determine its authenticity.