Fighting Malicious Media Data: A Survey on Tampering Detection and Deepfake Detection

Online media data, in the form of images and videos, are becoming mainstream communication channels. However, recent advances in deep learning (DL), particularly deep generative models, open the doors for producing perceptually convincing images and videos at a low cost, which not only poses a serious threat to the trustworthiness of digital information but also has severe societal implications. This motivates a growing interest in research in media tampering detection (TD), i.e., using DL techniques to examine whether media data have been maliciously manipulated. Depending on the content of the targeted images, media forgery could be divided into image tampering and Deepfake techniques. The former typically moves or erases the visual elements in ordinary images, while the latter manipulates the expressions and even the identity of human faces. Accordingly, the means of defense include image TD and Deepfake detection (DFD), which share a wide variety of properties. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of the current media TD approaches and discuss the challenges and trends in this field for future research.