DVAR: Adversarial Multi-Agent Debate for Video Authenticity Detection
Hongyuan Qi 1, Feifei Shao 1, Ming Li 2, Hehe Fan 1, Jun Xiao 1
Published on arXiv
2604.16987
Output Integrity Attack
OWASP ML Top 10 — ML09
Key Finding
Achieves competitive performance against supervised state-of-the-art methods while demonstrating superior generalization to unseen generative architectures through interpretable reasoning traces
DVAR
Novel technique introduced
The rapid evolution of video generation technologies poses a significant challenge to media forensics, as conventional detection methods often fail to generalize beyond their training distributions. To address this, we propose DVAR (Debate-based Video Authenticity Reasoning), a training-free framework that reformulates video detection as a structured multi-agent forensic reasoning process. Moving beyond the paradigm of pattern matching, DVAR orchestrates a competition between a Generative Hypothesis Agent and a Natural Mechanism Agent. Through iterative rounds of cross-examination, these agents defend their respective explanations against abnormal evidence, driving a logical convergence where the truth emerges from rigorous stress-testing. To adjudicate these conflicting claims, we apply Occam's Razor through the Minimum Description Length (MDL) framework, defining an Explanatory Cost to quantify the "logical burden" of each reasoning path. Furthermore, we integrate GenVideoKB, a dynamic knowledge repository that provides high-level reasoning heuristics on generative boundaries and failure modes. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DVAR achieves competitive performance against supervised state-of-the-art methods while exhibiting superior generalization to unseen generative architectures. By transforming detection into a transparent debate, DVAR provides explicit, interpretable reasoning traces for robust video authenticity assessment.
Key Contributions
- DVAR: training-free multi-agent debate framework reformulating video detection as adversarial forensic reasoning between competing hypotheses
- MDL-based Explanatory Cost metric using Occam's Razor to adjudicate between Generative vs. Natural hypotheses
- GenVideoKB knowledge repository providing reasoning heuristics on generative model failure modes and boundaries
🛡️ Threat Analysis
Primary contribution is detecting AI-generated video content and verifying video authenticity. The paper explicitly focuses on distinguishing real vs. synthetic videos (deepfake detection, AI-generated video detection), which is content provenance and output integrity verification.