On the Robustness of Face Recognition Algorithms Against Attacks and Bias

Face recognition algorithms have demonstrated very high recognition performance, suggesting suitability for real world applications. Despite the enhanced accuracies, robustness of these algorithms against attacks and bias has been challenged. This paper summarizes different ways in which the robustness of a face recognition algorithm is challenged, which can severely affect its intended working. Different types of attacks such as physical presentation attacks, disguise/makeup, digital adversarial attacks, and morphing/tampering using GANs have been discussed. We also present a discussion on the effect of bias on face recognition models and showcase that factors such as age and gender variations affect the performance of modern algorithms. The paper also presents the potential reasons for these challenges and some of the future research directions for increasing the robustness of face recognition models.Comment: Accepted in Senior Member Track, AAAI202

On the Effect of Selfie Beautification Filters on Face Detection and Recognition

Beautification and augmented reality filters are very popular in applications that use selfie images captured with smartphones or personal devices. However, they can distort or modify biometric features, severely affecting the capability of recognizing individuals' identity or even detecting the face. Accordingly, we address the effect of such filters on the accuracy of automated face detection and recognition. The social media image filters studied either modify the image contrast or illumination or occlude parts of the face with for example artificial glasses or animal noses. We observe that the effect of some of these filters is harmful both to face detection and identity recognition, specially if they obfuscate the eye or (to a lesser extent) the nose. To counteract such effect, we develop a method to reconstruct the applied manipulation with a modified version of the U-NET segmentation network. This is observed to contribute to a better face detection and recognition accuracy. From a recognition perspective, we employ distance measures and trained machine learning algorithms applied to features extracted using a ResNet-34 network trained to recognize faces. We also evaluate if incorporating filtered images to the training set of machine learning approaches are beneficial for identity recognition. Our results show good recognition when filters do not occlude important landmarks, specially the eyes (identification accuracy >99%, EER<2%). The combined effect of the proposed approaches also allow to mitigate the effect produced by filters that occlude parts of the face, achieving an identification accuracy of >92% with the majority of perturbations evaluated, and an EER <8%. Although there is room for improvement, when neither U-NET reconstruction nor training with filtered images is applied, the accuracy with filters that severely occlude the eye is 12% (EER)Comment: Published at Pattern Recognition Letters, 202

RetouchingFFHQ: A Large-scale Dataset for Fine-grained Face Retouching Detection

The widespread use of face retouching filters on short-video platforms has raised concerns about the authenticity of digital appearances and the impact of deceptive advertising. To address these issues, there is a pressing need to develop advanced face retouching techniques. However, the lack of large-scale and fine-grained face retouching datasets has been a major obstacle to progress in this field. In this paper, we introduce RetouchingFFHQ, a large-scale and fine-grained face retouching dataset that contains over half a million conditionally-retouched images. RetouchingFFHQ stands out from previous datasets due to its large scale, high quality, fine-grainedness, and customization. By including four typical types of face retouching operations and different retouching levels, we extend the binary face retouching detection into a fine-grained, multi-retouching type, and multi-retouching level estimation problem. Additionally, we propose a Multi-granularity Attention Module (MAM) as a plugin for CNN backbones for enhanced cross-scale representation learning. Extensive experiments using different baselines as well as our proposed method on RetouchingFFHQ show decent performance on face retouching detection. With the proposed new dataset, we believe there is great potential for future work to tackle the challenging problem of real-world fine-grained face retouching detection.Comment: Under revie

Boosting Image Forgery Detection using Resampling Features and Copy-move analysis

Realistic image forgeries involve a combination of splicing, resampling, cloning, region removal and other methods. While resampling detection algorithms are effective in detecting splicing and resampling, copy-move detection algorithms excel in detecting cloning and region removal. In this paper, we combine these complementary approaches in a way that boosts the overall accuracy of image manipulation detection. We use the copy-move detection method as a pre-filtering step and pass those images that are classified as untampered to a deep learning based resampling detection framework. Experimental results on various datasets including the 2017 NIST Nimble Challenge Evaluation dataset comprising nearly 10,000 pristine and tampered images shows that there is a consistent increase of 8%-10% in detection rates, when copy-move algorithm is combined with different resampling detection algorithms

Handbook of Digital Face Manipulation and Detection

This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of studies dealing with the hot topic of digital face manipulation such as DeepFakes, Face Morphing, or Reenactment. It combines the research fields of biometrics and media forensics including contributions from academia and industry. Appealing to a broad readership, introductory chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, which address readers wishing to gain a brief overview of the state-of-the-art. Subsequent chapters, which delve deeper into various research challenges, are oriented towards advanced readers. Moreover, the book provides a good starting point for young researchers as well as a reference guide pointing at further literature. Hence, the primary readership is academic institutions and industry currently involved in digital face manipulation and detection. The book could easily be used as a recommended text for courses in image processing, machine learning, media forensics, biometrics, and the general security area

Impact and Detection of Facial Beautification in Face Recognition: An Overview

International audienceFacial beautification induced by plastic surgery, cosmetics or retouching has the ability to substantially alter the appearance of face images. Such types of beautification can negatively affect the accuracy of face recognition systems. In this work, a conceptual categorisation of beautification is presented, relevant scenarios with respect to face recognition are discussed, and related publications are revisited. Additionally, technical considerations and trade-offs of the surveyed methods are summarized along with open issues and challenges in the field. This survey is targeted to provide a comprehensive point of reference for biometric researchers and practitioners working in the field of face recognition, who aim at tackling challenges caused by facial beautification