TrueFake: A Real World Case Dataset of Last Generation Fake Images also Shared on Social Networks

--AI-generated synthetic media are increasingly used in real-world scenarios, often with the purpose of spreading misinformation and propaganda through social media platforms, where compression and other processing can degrade fake detection cues. Currently, many forensic tools fail to account for these in-the-wild challenges. In this work, we introduce TrueFake, a large-scale benchmarking dataset of 600,000 images including top notch generative techniques and sharing via three different social networks. This dataset allows for rigorous evaluation of state-of-the-art fake image detectors under very realistic and challenging conditions. Through extensive experimentation, we analyze how social media sharing impacts detection performance, and identify current most effective detection and training strategies. Our findings highlight the need for evaluating forensic models in conditions that mirror real-world use. In recent years, AI-generated media (such as images, videos, and audio) have increasingly become part of everyday life [3] becoming widely used in the entertainment industry, including movie production and advertising. The literature provides a broad range of AI media generators capable of producing hyper-realistic images [4], [5], videos [6], and even audio [7].