defense 2026

UniGenDet: A Unified Generative-Discriminative Framework for Co-Evolutionary Image Generation and Generated Image Detection

Yanran Zhang , Wenzhao Zheng , Yifei Li , Bingyao Yu , Yu Zheng , Lei Chen , Jiwen Lu , Jie Zhou

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Published on arXiv

2604.21904

Output Integrity Attack

OWASP ML Top 10 — ML09

Key Finding

Achieves state-of-the-art performance on generated image detection while improving generation quality through co-evolutionary training

UniGenDet

Novel technique introduced


In recent years, significant progress has been made in both image generation and generated image detection. Despite their rapid, yet largely independent, development, these two fields have evolved distinct architectural paradigms: the former predominantly relies on generative networks, while the latter favors discriminative frameworks. A recent trend in both domains is the use of adversarial information to enhance performance, revealing potential for synergy. However, the significant architectural divergence between them presents considerable challenges. Departing from previous approaches, we propose UniGenDet: a Unified generative-discriminative framework for co-evolutionary image Generation and generated image Detection. To bridge the task gap, we design a symbiotic multimodal self-attention mechanism and a unified fine-tuning algorithm. This synergy allows the generation task to improve the interpretability of authenticity identification, while authenticity criteria guide the creation of higher-fidelity images. Furthermore, we introduce a detector-informed generative alignment mechanism to facilitate seamless information exchange. Extensive experiments on multiple datasets demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance. Code: \href{https://github.com/Zhangyr2022/UniGenDet}{https://github.com/Zhangyr2022/UniGenDet}.


Key Contributions

  • Unified generative-discriminative framework enabling co-evolution of image generation and detection
  • Symbiotic multimodal self-attention mechanism bridging generative and discriminative architectures
  • Detector-informed generative alignment for higher-fidelity image synthesis guided by authenticity criteria

🛡️ Threat Analysis

Output Integrity Attack

Primary contribution is detecting AI-generated images (synthetic image detection) and improving generation quality through detector feedback — both core ML09 output integrity concerns.


Details

Domains
visiongenerative
Model Types
diffusiongantransformer
Threat Tags
inference_time
Applications
ai-generated image detectionimage synthesisdeepfake detection