Recognition of synthesized images using modified convolutional neural network model VGG16

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to recognizing synthesized images using transfer learning, specifically the VGG16 model. With the growing prevalence of AI-generated content on social media and the increasing use of synthesized images for fraudulent purposes, the ability to accurately distinguish between real and synthesized images is of utmost importance. The study addresses the limitations of existing image recognition technologies, which often have difficulty when working with high-quality images created by AI. The proposed method uses a custom-made dataset of more than 200 000 images, balanced between AI-generated and real images of several classes, to train the model. By fine-tuning the VGG16 model and unfreezing all layers, this approach achieves great accuracy. Experimental results show that the model achieves an overall accuracy of 97%, compared to 93% accuracy of baseline model, indicating its effectiveness in distinguishing between real and synthesized images. However, shortco-mings such as slight overfitting are noted, and suggestions for future improvement include regularization techniques and exploring more advanced architectures and techniques. This research highlights the potential of transfer learning in developing robust solutions for synthesized image recognition.