Image Steganography and Style Transformation Based on Generative Adversarial Network

Traditional image steganography conceals secret messages in unprocessed natural images by modifying the pixel value, causing the obtained stego to be different from the original image in terms of the statistical distribution; thereby, it can be detected by a well-trained classifier for steganalysis. To ensure the steganography is imperceptible and in line with the trend of art images produced by Artificial-Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) becoming popular on social networks, this paper proposes to embed hidden information throughout the process of the generation of an art-style image by designing an image-style-transformation neural network with a steganography function. The proposed scheme takes a content image, an art-style image, and messages to be embedded as inputs, processing them with an encoder–decoder model, and finally, generates a styled image containing the secret messages at the same time. An adversarial training technique was applied to enhance the imperceptibility of the generated art-style stego image from plain-style-transferred images. The lack of the original cover image makes it difficult for the opponent learning steganalyzer to identify the stego. The proposed approach can successfully withstand existing steganalysis techniques and attain the embedding capacity of three bits per pixel for a color image, according to the experimental results.