Convergence of Deep Learning and Forensic Methodologies Using Self-attention Integrated EfficientNet Model for Deep Fake Detection

The immensely increasing number of Deepfake technologies poses significant challenges to digital media integrity, leading to the immediate need for effective Deepfake detection methods. In light of the growing threat posed by sophisticated synthetic media, this paper tackles the urgent need for accurate deepfake detection in real-time by proposing a novel classification model employing a fine-tuned EfficientNet-B0 model with an optimally integrated Self-attention mechanism. The study also analyzes various Deepfake generation techniques by utilizing a suite of Convolutional Neural Networks namely, XceptionNet, NasNetLarge, InceptionV3, ConNextv1, ConvNext2 and EfficientB0 model on the Celeb-DF dataset for baseline model selection and performance comparison purposes. The results prove that the proposed fine-tuned EfficientNet-B0 model with integrated self-attention mechanism is the most superior at identifying complex long-range dependencies and relations in various unconnected image regions, highlighting the importance of attention mechanisms in improving deep learning models for multimedia forensics with a remarkable F-score of 97.67 % . In an era marked by the proliferation of sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI)-driven synthetic media, these findings establish the foundation for strengthening digital media platform security and protecting information authenticity.