Deepfake Detection and Authentication Using Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Models: A Case Study

Abstract

The progress of artificial intelligence (AI) has enabled the creation of very realistic synthetic media, also known as deepfakes, which poses a serious threat to information integrity and social confidence. The article examined the process of detecting and authenticating deep fakes using hybrid AI models. The researchers employed the case study methodology, based on the Celeb-DF V2 dataset, one of the most challenging datasets for generating high-quality manipulated videos. The suggested system combined convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to extract spatial features, recurrent neural networks (LSTMs/GRUs) to model temporal consistency, and transformer systems to analyse fine-grained context. The researchers bundled these parts together to enhance robustness and generalisation in an ensemble mechanism. They also introduced provenance tracking and semi-fragile watermarking to supplement detection, enabling proactive authentication and watermark verification of media through blockchain-based provenance tracking. The experimental findings showed that the hybrid models were more accurate, achieved higher F1 Scores, and were more robust to adversarial manipulations than the single-model baselines. The hybrid with a transformer achieved the best accuracy (0.95 AUC) and the lowest false-positive rate (6%), but at the expense of slower processing speeds. Authentication tools also helped strengthen trust by verifying the originality of content and flagging potential manipulation before it was classified. The results have revealed that hybrid AI models, when implemented with authentication strategies, represent a more effective and legitimate approach to addressing the threats of misinformation, fraud, and loss of trust among the population in the face of deepfakes.