Video Deepfake Classification Using Particle Swarm Optimization-based Evolving Ensemble Models

The recent breakthrough of deep learning based generative models has led to the escalated generation of photo-realistic synthetic videos with significant visual quality. Automated reliable detection of such forged videos requires the extraction of fine-grained discriminative spatial-temporal cues. To tackle such challenges, we propose weighted and evolving ensemble models comprising 3D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and CNN-Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based network topology and hyper-parameter optimization for video authenticity classification. A new PSO algorithm is proposed, which embeds Muller’s method and fixed-point iteration based leader enhancement, reinforcement learning-based optimal search action selection, a petal spiral simulated search mechanism, and cross-breed elite signal generation based on adaptive geometric surfaces. The PSO variant optimizes the RNN topologies in CNN-RNN, as well as key learning configurations of 3D CNNs, with the attempt to extract effective discriminative spatial-temporal cues. Both weighted and evolving ensemble strategies are used for ensemble formulation with aforementioned optimized networks as base classifiers. In particular, the proposed PSO algorithm is used to identify optimal subsets of optimized base networks for dynamic ensemble generation to balance between ensemble complexity and performance. Evaluated using several well-known synthetic video datasets, our approach outperforms existing studies and various ensemble models devised by other search methods with statistical significance for video authenticity classification. The proposed PSO model also illustrates statistical superiority over a number of search methods for solving optimization problems pertaining to a variety of artificial landscapes with diverse geometrical layouts.