Energy efficiency of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) has become an important area of research, with various strategies being developed to minimize the power consumption of these models. Previous efforts, including techniques like model pruning, quantization, and hardware optimization, have made significant strides in this direction. However, there remains a need for more effective on device AI solutions that balance energy efficiency with model performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to reduce the energy requirements of inference of CNNs. Our methodology employs two small Complementary CNNs that collaborate with each other by covering each other's "weaknesses" in predictions. If the confidence for a prediction of the first CNN is considered low, the second CNN is invoked with the aim of producing a higher confidence prediction. This dual-CNN setup significantly reduces energy consumption compared to using a single large deep CNN. Additionally, we propose a memory component that retains previous classifications for identical inputs, bypassing the need to re-invoke the CNNs for the same input, further saving energy. Our experiments on a Jetson Nano computer demonstrate an energy reduction of up to 85.8% achieved on modified datasets where each sample was duplicated once. These findings indicate that leveraging a complementary CNN pair along with a memory component effectively reduces inference energy while maintaining high accuracy.

Recent works have established that AI models introduce spectral artifacts into generated images and propose approaches for learning to capture them using labeled data. However, the significant differences in such artifacts among different generative models hinder these approaches from generalizing to generators not seen during training. In this work, we build upon the key idea that the spectral distribution of real images constitutes both an invariant and highly discriminative pattern for AI-generated image detection. To model this under a self-supervised setup, we employ masked spectral learning using the pretext task of frequency reconstruction. Since generated images constitute out-of-distribution samples for this model, we propose spectral reconstruction similarity to capture this divergence. Moreover, we introduce spectral context attention, which enables our approach to efficiently capture subtle spectral inconsistencies in images of any resolution. Our spectral AI-generated image detection approach (SPAI) achieves a 5.5% absolute improvement in AUC over the previous state-of-the-art across 13 recent generative approaches, while exhibiting robustness against common online perturbations.

Digital image manipulation has become increasingly accessible and realistic with the advent of generative AI technologies. Recent developments allow for text-guided inpainting, making sophisticated image edits possible with minimal effort. This poses new challenges for digital media forensics. For example, diffusion model-based approaches could either splice the inpainted region into the original image, or regenerate the entire image. In the latter case, traditional image forgery localization (IFL) methods typically fail. This paper introduces the Text-Guided Inpainting Forgery (TGIF) dataset, a comprehensive collection of images designed to support the training and evaluation of image forgery localization and synthetic image detection (SID) methods. The TGIF dataset includes approximately 80k forged images, originating from popular open-source and commercial methods; SD2, SDXL, and Adobe Firefly. Using this data, we benchmark several state-of-the-art IFL and SID methods. Whereas traditional IFL methods can detect spliced images, they fail to detect regenerated inpainted images. Moreover, traditional SID may detect the regenerated inpainted images to be fake, but cannot localize the inpainted area. Finally, both types of methods fail when exposed to stronger compression, while they are less robust to modern compression algorithms, such as WEBP. As such, this work demonstrates the inefficiency of state-of-the-art detectors on local manipulations performed by modern generative approaches, and aspires to help with the development of more capable IFL and SID methods. The dataset can be downloaded at https://github.com/IDLabMedia/tgif-dataset.

Artificial intelligence systems often address fairness concerns by evaluating and mitigating measures of group discrimination, for example that indicate biases against certain genders or races. However, what constitutes group fairness depends on who is asked and the social context, whereas definitions are often relaxed to accept small deviations from the statistical constraints they set out to impose. Here we decouple definitions of group fairness both from the context and from relaxation-related uncertainty by expressing them in the axiomatic system of Basic fuzzy Logic (BL) with loosely understood predicates, like encountering group members. We then evaluate the definitions in subclasses of BL, such as Product or Lukasiewicz logics. Evaluation produces continuous instead of binary truth values by choosing the logic subclass and truth values for predicates that reflect uncertain context-specific beliefs, such as stakeholder opinions gathered through questionnaires. Internally, it follows logic-specific rules to compute the truth values of definitions. We show that commonly held propositions standardize the resulting mathematical formulas and we transcribe logic and truth value choices to layperson terms, so that anyone can answer them. We also use our framework to study several literature definitions of algorithmic fairness, for which we rationalize previous expedient practices that are non-probabilistic and show how to re-interpret their formulas and parameters in new contexts.

This paper discusses four facets of the Knowledge Distillation (KD) process for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Vision Transformer (ViT) architectures, particularly when executed on edge devices with constrained processing capabilities. First, we conduct a comparative analysis of the KD process between CNNs and ViT architectures, aiming to elucidate the feasibility and efficacy of employing different architectural configurations for the teacher and student, while assessing their performance and efficiency. Second, we explore the impact of varying the size of the student model on accuracy and inference speed, while maintaining a constant KD duration. Third, we examine the effects of employing higher resolution images on the accuracy, memory footprint and computational workload. Last, we examine the performance improvements obtained by fine-tuning the student model after KD to specific downstream tasks. Through empirical evaluations and analyses, this research provides AI practitioners with insights into optimal strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of the KD process on edge devices.

Creating fair AI systems is a complex problem that involves the assessment of context-dependent bias concerns. Existing research and programming libraries express specific concerns as measures of bias that they aim to constrain or mitigate. In practice, one should explore a wide variety of (sometimes incompatible) measures before deciding which ones warrant corrective action, but their narrow scope means that most new situations can only be examined after devising new measures. In this work, we present a mathematical framework that distils literature measures of bias into building blocks, hereby facilitating new combinations to cover a wide range of fairness concerns, such as classification or recommendation differences across multiple multi-value sensitive attributes (e.g., many genders and races, and their intersections). We show how this framework generalizes existing concepts and present frequently used blocks. We provide an open-source implementation of our framework as a Python library, called FairBench, that facilitates systematic and extensible exploration of potential bias concerns.

Synthetically generated images can be used to create media content or to complement datasets for training image analysis models. Several methods have recently been proposed for the synthesis of high-fidelity face images; however, the potential biases introduced by such methods have not been sufficiently addressed. This paper examines the bias introduced by the widely popular StyleGAN2 generative model trained on the Flickr Faces HQ dataset and proposes two sampling strategies to balance the representation of selected attributes in the generated face images. We focus on two protected attributes, gender and age, and reveal that biases arise in the distribution of randomly sampled images against very young and very old age groups, as well as against female faces. These biases are also assessed for different image quality levels based on the GIQA score. To mitigate bias, we propose two alternative methods for sampling on selected lines or spheres of the latent space to increase the number of generated samples from the under-represented classes. The experimental results show a decrease in bias against underrepresented groups and a more uniform distribution of the protected features at different levels of image quality.

Automated fact-checking (AFC) is garnering increasing attention by researchers aiming to help fact-checkers combat the increasing spread of misinformation online. While many existing AFC methods incorporate external information from the Web to help examine the veracity of claims, they often overlook the importance of verifying the source and quality of collected "evidence". One overlooked challenge involves the reliance on "leaked evidence", information gathered directly from fact-checking websites and used to train AFC systems, resulting in an unrealistic setting for early misinformation detection. Similarly, the inclusion of information from unreliable sources can undermine the effectiveness of AFC systems. To address these challenges, we present a comprehensive approach to evidence verification and filtering. We create the "CREDible, Unreliable or LEaked" (CREDULE) dataset, which consists of 91,632 articles classified as Credible, Unreliable and Fact checked (Leaked). Additionally, we introduce the EVidence VERification Network (EVVER-Net), trained on CREDULE to detect leaked and unreliable evidence in both short and long texts. EVVER-Net can be used to filter evidence collected from the Web, thus enhancing the robustness of end-to-end AFC systems. We experiment with various language models and show that EVVER-Net can demonstrate impressive performance of up to 91.5% and 94.4% accuracy, while leveraging domain credibility scores along with short or long texts, respectively. Finally, we assess the evidence provided by widely-used fact-checking datasets including LIAR-PLUS, MOCHEG, FACTIFY, NewsCLIPpings+ and VERITE, some of which exhibit concerning rates of leaked and unreliable evidence.

The generative AI technology offers an increasing variety of tools for generating entirely synthetic images that are increasingly indistinguishable from real ones. Unlike methods that alter portions of an image, the creation of completely synthetic images presents a unique challenge and several Synthetic Image Detection (SID) methods have recently appeared to tackle it. Yet, there is often a large gap between experimental results on benchmark datasets and the performance of methods in the wild. To better address the evaluation needs of SID and help close this gap, this paper introduces a benchmarking framework that integrates several state-of-the-art SID models. Our selection of integrated models was based on the utilization of varied input features, and different network architectures, aiming to encompass a broad spectrum of techniques. The framework leverages recent datasets with a diverse set of generative models, high level of photo-realism and resolution, reflecting the rapid improvements in image synthesis technology. Additionally, the framework enables the study of how image transformations, common in assets shared online, such as JPEG compression, affect detection performance. SIDBench is available on https://github.com/mever-team/sidbench and is designed in a modular manner to enable easy inclusion of new datasets and SID models.

In this paper we propose a new framework for evaluating the performance of explanation methods on the decisions of a deepfake detector. This framework assesses the ability of an explanation method to spot the regions of a fake image with the biggest influence on the decision of the deepfake detector, by examining the extent to which these regions can be modified through a set of adversarial attacks, in order to flip the detector's prediction or reduce its initial prediction; we anticipate a larger drop in deepfake detection accuracy and prediction, for methods that spot these regions more accurately. Based on this framework, we conduct a comparative study using a state-of-the-art model for deepfake detection that has been trained on the FaceForensics++ dataset, and five explanation methods from the literature. The findings of our quantitative and qualitative evaluations document the advanced performance of the LIME explanation method against the other compared ones, and indicate this method as the most appropriate for explaining the decisions of the utilized deepfake detector.