Real or virtual: a video conferencing background manipulation-detection system

Ehsan Nowroozi*, Yassine Mekdad, Mauro Conti, Simone Milani, Selcuk Uluagac

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

In the past few years, the popularity and wide use of video conferencing software enjoyed exponential growth in market size. This technology enables participants in different geographic regions to have a virtual face-to-face meeting. Additionally, it allows participants to utilize virtual backgrounds to hide their real environment with privacy concerns or to reduce distractions, particularly in professional settings. In scenarios where the users should not hide their actual locations, they may mislead other participants into assuming that the displayed virtual backgrounds are real. In this paper, we propose a new publicly-available dataset of virtual and real backgrounds in video conferencing software (e.g., Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams). The presented archive was evaluated by an exhaustive series of tests and scenarios using two well-known features extraction methods: CRSPAM1372 and six co-mat. The first verification scenario considers the case where the detector is unaware of manipulated frames (i.e., the forensically-edited frames are not part of the training set). A model trained on zoom frames that were tested with Google Meet frames can detect real background images from virtual ones in video conferencing software with 99.80% detection accuracy. Furthermore, it is possible to distinguish virtual from real backgrounds in videos created for videoconferencing software at a high detection rate of approximately 99.80%. According to our conclusions, the proposed method greatly enhanced the detection accuracy and resistance against diverse adversarial conditions, making it a reliable technique for classifying actual as opposed to virtual backgrounds in video communications. Given the described dataset provided and some preliminary experiments that we performed, we expect that it will lead to more future research in this domain.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages33
JournalMultimedia Tools and Applications
Early online date25 Sept 2024
DOIs
Publication statusEarly online date - 25 Sept 2024

Keywords

  • real or virtual
  • video conferencing
  • background manipulation-detection system

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