In Anticipation of Perfect Deepfake: Identity-anchored Artifact-agnostic Detection under Rebalanced Deepfake Detection Protocol

Abstract: As deep generative models advance, we anticipate deepfakes achieving "perfection"-generating no discernible artifacts or noise. However, current deepfake detectors, intentionally or inadvertently, rely on such artifacts for detection, as they are exclusive to deepfakes and absent in genuine examples. To bridge this gap, we introduce the Rebalanced Deepfake Detection Protocol (RDDP) to stress-test detectors under balanced scenarios where genuine and forged examples bear similar artifacts. We offer two RDDP variants: RDDP-WHITEHAT uses white-hat deepfake algorithms to create 'self-deepfakes,' genuine portrait videos with the resemblance of the underlying identity, yet carry similar artifacts to deepfake videos; RDDP-SURROGATE employs surrogate functions (e.g., Gaussian noise) to process both genuine and forged examples, introducing equivalent noise, thereby sidestepping the need of deepfake algorithms. Towards detecting perfect deepfake videos that aligns with genuine ones, we present ID-Miner, a detector that identifies the puppeteer behind the disguise by focusing on motion over artifacts or appearances. As an identity-based detector, it authenticates videos by comparing them with reference footage. Equipped with the artifact-agnostic loss at frame-level and the identity-anchored loss at video-level, ID-Miner effectively singles out identity signals amidst distracting variations. Extensive experiments comparing ID-Miner with 12 baseline detectors under both conventional and RDDP evaluations with two deepfake datasets, along with additional qualitative studies, affirm the superiority of our method and the necessity for detectors designed to counter perfect deepfakes.