WILD: a new in-the-Wild Image Linkage Dataset for synthetic image attribution

Synthetic image source attribution is an open challenge, with an increasing number of image generators being released yearly. The complexity and the sheer number of available generative techniques, as well as the scarcity of high-quality open source datasets of diverse nature for this task, make training and benchmarking synthetic image source attribution models very challenging. WILD is a new in-the-Wild Image Linkage Dataset designed to provide a powerful training and benchmarking tool for synthetic image attribution models. The dataset is built out of a closed set of 10 popular commercial generators, which constitutes the training base of attribution models, and an open set of 10 additional generators, simulating a real-world in-the-wild scenario. Each generator is represented by 1,000 images, for a total of 10,000 images in the closed set and 10,000 images in the open set. Half of the images are post-processed with a wide range of operators. WILD allows benchmarking attribution models in a wide range of tasks, including closed and open set identification and verification, and robust attribution with respect to post-processing and adversarial attacks. Models trained on WILD are expected to benefit from the challenging scenario represented by the dataset itself. Moreover, an assessment of seven baseline methodologies on closed and open set attribution is presented, including robustness tests with respect to post-processing.

@article{bongini2025_2504.19595,
  title={ WILD: a new in-the-Wild Image Linkage Dataset for synthetic image attribution },
  author={ Pietro Bongini and Sara Mandelli and Andrea Montibeller and Mirko Casu and Orazio Pontorno and Claudio Vittorio Ragaglia and Luca Zanchetta and Mattia Aquilina and Taiba Majid Wani and Luca Guarnera and Benedetta Tondi and Giulia Boato and Paolo Bestagini and Irene Amerini and Francesco De Natale and Sebastiano Battiato and Mauro Barni },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.19595},
  year={ 2025 }
}