LiteUpdate: A Lightweight Framework for Updating AI-Generated Image Detectors
Jiajie Lu 1,2, Zhenkan Fu 1, Na Zhao 1, Long Xing 1,2, Kejiang Chen 1, Weiming Zhang 1, Nenghai Yu 1
Published on arXiv
2511.07192
Output Integrity Attack
OWASP ML Top 10 — ML09
Key Finding
On the AIDE benchmark, LiteUpdate improves average detection accuracy on Midjourney from 87.63% to 93.03% (6.16% relative gain) while mitigating catastrophic forgetting on previously seen generators.
LiteUpdate
Novel technique introduced
The rapid progress of generative AI has led to the emergence of new generative models, while existing detection methods struggle to keep pace, resulting in significant degradation in the detection performance. This highlights the urgent need for continuously updating AI-generated image detectors to adapt to new generators. To overcome low efficiency and catastrophic forgetting in detector updates, we propose LiteUpdate, a lightweight framework for updating AI-generated image detectors. LiteUpdate employs a representative sample selection module that leverages image confidence and gradient-based discriminative features to precisely select boundary samples. This approach improves learning and detection accuracy on new distributions with limited generated images, significantly enhancing detector update efficiency. Additionally, LiteUpdate incorporates a model merging module that fuses weights from multiple fine-tuning trajectories, including pre-trained, representative, and random updates. This balances the adaptability to new generators and mitigates the catastrophic forgetting of prior knowledge. Experiments demonstrate that LiteUpdate substantially boosts detection performance in various detectors. Specifically, on AIDE, the average detection accuracy on Midjourney improved from 87.63% to 93.03%, a 6.16% relative increase.
Key Contributions
- Representative sample selection module leveraging image confidence and gradient-based discriminative features to identify boundary samples for efficient detector fine-tuning
- Model merging module that fuses weights from pre-trained, representative, and random fine-tuning trajectories to balance adaptability and mitigate catastrophic forgetting
- Lightweight update framework demonstrated to improve detection accuracy across multiple detector architectures on unseen generative models
🛡️ Threat Analysis
The paper's primary contribution is improving AI-generated image detection systems — directly within ML09's scope of output integrity and AI-generated content detection. The novel sample selection and model merging modules are specifically designed to maintain and improve detector accuracy against new generative models (Midjourney, FLUX, SD 3.0).