A binary image classifier that flags a given face image as real or fake (deepfake / synthetically manipulated). Built as a hybrid dual-backbone model combining fine-tuned google/efficientnet-b1 and mobilint/RegNet_Y_800MF.tv2_in1k feature extractors, trained on the ThinothW/Deepfake-Identity-Isolated-Dataset-PreP dataset.

This model was built as part of a university course project (AI Lab, SE334) exploring deepfake face detection.

Author: S. M. Nihal Ahmed

Model Details

Base models: google/efficientnet-b1, mobilint/RegNet_Y_800MF.tv2_in1k
Task: Binary image classification (fake vs real)
License: MIT
Architecture: Hybrid dual-backbone — EfficientNet-B1 and RegNetY-800MF feature extractors, both fine-tuned end-to-end, with their pooled features fused and passed through a classification head
Fine-tuning objective: Cross-entropy loss over the two classes, with sklearn balanced class weights applied to account for class imbalance
Training regime: Mixed-precision (AMP) training on a CUDA GPU, up to 100 epochs per stage with early stopping (patience = 5, monitored on validation loss); two-stage schedule — Stage A trains only the fusion head with both backbones frozen, Stage B fine-tunes both backbones together at a lower learning rate

Intended Use

This model is intended for detecting AI-generated or manipulated (deepfake) face images versus authentic (real) face images. Example use cases:

Screening uploaded profile/identity photos for synthetic manipulation
Research and coursework on deepfake detection and media forensics
A component in a larger content-authenticity verification pipeline

Out of scope: This model is not a complete or production-ready deepfake detection guardrail. It has been evaluated on one dataset only, and will not necessarily generalize to deepfake generation methods, image qualities, or demographics absent from its training data.

How to Use

This model is distributed as an ONNX export. Download both files and keep them in the same folder — the .onnx graph loads its weights from the .onnx.data file alongside it at runtime:

deepfake_hybrid_final.onnx — the ONNX graph
deepfake_hybrid_final.onnx.data — the external weights file

Install dependencies:

pip install onnxruntime huggingface_hub pillow numpy

Single-image prediction

python

import numpy as np
import onnxruntime as ort
from PIL import Image
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download

REPO_ID = "nihal4/Deep_Fake_Hybrid_Model"
IMG_SIZE = 260
IMAGENET_MEAN = np.array([0.485, 0.456, 0.406], dtype=np.float32)
IMAGENET_STD  = np.array([0.229, 0.224, 0.225], dtype=np.float32)
LABEL_MAP = {0: "fake", 1: "real"}

# Downloads both files into the same local cache folder — required, since the
# .onnx graph references .onnx.data by relative path at load time.
onnx_path = hf_hub_download(repo_id=REPO_ID, filename="deepfake_hybrid_final.onnx")
hf_hub_download(repo_id=REPO_ID, filename="deepfake_hybrid_final.onnx.data")

session = ort.InferenceSession(onnx_path, providers=["CPUExecutionProvider"])
input_name = session.get_inputs()[0].name
output_name = session.get_outputs()[0].name

def preprocess_pil(img: Image.Image) -> np.ndarray:
    img = img.convert("RGB").resize((IMG_SIZE, IMG_SIZE))
    arr = np.asarray(img, dtype=np.float32) / 255.0        # HWC, [0,1]
    arr = (arr - IMAGENET_MEAN) / IMAGENET_STD              # normalize, same stats as training
    return arr.transpose(2, 0, 1)                           # HWC -> CHW

def softmax(x: np.ndarray) -> np.ndarray:
    e = np.exp(x - x.max(axis=1, keepdims=True))
    return e / e.sum(axis=1, keepdims=True)

def predict(image_path: str):
    image = Image.open(image_path)
    x = preprocess_pil(image)[np.newaxis, ...].astype(np.float32)
    logits = session.run([output_name], {input_name: x})[0]
    probs = softmax(logits)[0]
    label = LABEL_MAP[int(probs.argmax())]
    return label, probs

label, probs = predict("path/to/face.jpg")
print(f"Prediction: {label}  (p_fake={probs[0]:.3f}, p_real={probs[1]:.3f})")

Batch prediction

python

image_paths = ["face1.jpg", "face2.jpg", "face3.jpg"]

batch = np.stack([preprocess_pil(Image.open(p)) for p in image_paths]).astype(np.float32)
logits = session.run([output_name], {input_name: batch})[0]
probs = softmax(logits)
preds = probs.argmax(axis=1)

for path, pred, p in zip(image_paths, preds, probs):
    print(f"{path}: {LABEL_MAP[int(pred)]}  (p_fake={p[0]:.3f}, p_real={p[1]:.3f})")

For GPU inference, install onnxruntime-gpu instead and pass providers=["CUDAExecutionProvider", "CPUExecutionProvider"] when creating the session.

Training Data

The model was fine-tuned on the ThinothW/Deepfake-Identity-Isolated-Dataset-PreP dataset.

Labels: 0 = fake, 1 = real
Splits: train / validation / test
Preprocessing: resize to 260×260, ImageNet normalization (mean [0.485, 0.456, 0.406], std [0.229, 0.224, 0.225])
Training augmentation: random horizontal flip, random rotation (±10°), color jitter, plus simulated JPEG compression and simulated blur/downscale-upscale (to reduce false positives on low-quality real footage)
Class balancing: sklearn balanced class weights applied in the loss function to address train-set class imbalance

Training Procedure

Framework: PyTorch
Hardware: Kaggle free-tier T4 GPU
Loss: Cross-entropy
Mixed precision: Enabled (AMP)

Evaluation

Evaluated on the held-out test split (n = 21,316) at a decision threshold of 0.5.

Classification Report

Class	Precision	Recall	F1-score	Support
fake	0.95	0.96	0.95	10,706
real	0.96	0.95	0.95	10,610
accuracy			0.9539	21,316
macro avg	0.95	0.95	0.95	21,316
weighted avg	0.95	0.95	0.95	21,316

Test ROC-AUC: 0.9903

Confusion Matrix

ROC Curve

Limitations

Performance is reported on a single dataset; generalization to other deepfake generation methods, image resolutions, compression levels, or demographics is not guaranteed.
As with most deepfake detectors, robustness against novel/unseen generative techniques (including adversarially crafted ones) has not been evaluated here.
The model has not been evaluated as a standalone production guardrail; it is intended to complement, not replace, other verification measures.

Citation

If you use this model, please cite this repository and reference this course project:

@misc{deepfake-hybrid-detector,
  title  = {Detecting Deepfake Faces: An Image Classification Approach to Safeguarding Digital Identity},
  author = {S. M. Nihal Ahmed},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Course project, AI Lab (SE334), Daffodil International University}
}