PhD Position F/M PhD Position or Postdoc Computer Vision / Deep Learning: Deepfake Detection

Inria; Valbonne; On-site; EUR 23,000 - 29,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Partial reimbursement of public tramns

Leave: 7 weeks annual leave + RTT days

Teleworking and flexible hours

Professional equipment available

Social, cultural and sports events

Access to vocational training

Mutual insurance (subject toConditions

Job summary

Inria, the French National Institute for Digital Science, invites applications for a PhD position or postdoc in computer vision and deep learning to tackle deepfake detection. The STARS team at Inria Côte d'Azur collaborates with industry to advance AI-driven media integrity.

Ideal candidates hold a Master in CS, have strong Python/OpenCV and DL skills (PyTorch or TensorFlow), and are committed to high-quality research and publications.

Qualifications

• Master degree or equivalent in Computer Science or closely related discipline.
• Strong background in computer vision, deep learning and machine learning.
• Solid programming skills and fundamentals in image/video analysis.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research on detecting AI-generated videos, especially talking-face deepfakes.
• Develop robust detectors generalizable to compressed footage and unseen generators.
• Evaluate methods on real-world data and publish in top venues.

Skills

Computer Vision

Deep Learning

Machine Learning

Python

OpenCV

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Education

Master degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Python

OpenCV

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

PhD Position F/M PhD Position or Postdoc Computer Vision / Deep Learning: Deepfake Detection

Fonction : Doctorant

Inria is the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science, of which the Inria Côte d'Azur University Center is a part. With strong expertise in computer science and applied mathematics, the research projects of the Inria Côte d'Azur University Center cover all aspects of digital science and technology and generate innovation. Based mainly in Sophia Antipolis, but also in Nice and Montpellier, it brings together 47 research teams and nine support services. It is active in the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, IT system security, robotics, network engineering, natural risk prevention, ecological transition, digital biology, computational neuroscience, health data, and more. The Inria Center at Université Côte d'Azur is a major player in terms of scientific excellence, thanks to the results it has achieved and its collaborations at both European and international level

Inria, the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics, promotes “scientific excellence for technology transfer and society”. Graduates from the world’s top universities, Inria's 2,700 employees rise to the challenges of digital sciences. With its open, agile model, Inria is able to explore original approaches with its partners in industry and academia and provide an efficient response to the multidisciplinary and application challenges of the digital transformation. Inria is the source of many innovations that add value and create jobs.

Team

The STARS research team combines advanced theory with cutting edge practice focusing on cognitive vision systems.

The Inria STARS team is seeking for a Ph.D. or postdoctoral researcher with strong background in computer vision, deep learning and machine learning.

The candidate is expected to conduct research related to deepfake detection.

Context. The position is in the STARS team at the Inria Centre at Université Côte d’Azur (Sophia Antipolis), within a collaborative project with an industrial partner specializing in the analysis of online disinformation. Generative AI tools for images, voice, and video are now easy to use, and a growing share of the content in influence campaigns is synthetic and hard to detect. The project aims to advance the automatic detection of AI-generated videos and to transfer the resulting methods to operational tools.

Topic. The research will focus on detecting AI-generated videos, especially talking-face deepfakes. Current detectors degrade on compressed footage and on content from unseen generators, such as recent diffusion models, so the main goal is generalization. Key directions include audio-visual consistency through lip-reading embeddings, temporal and physiological cues, and using the team’s own video generation models to build diverse training data. The detectors should be robust to social media degradations and produce calibrated outputs so they can be fused with audio and image detectors. The candidate will evaluate the methods on real-world data and publish in top computer vision and biometrics venues.

Candidates must hold a Master degree or equivalent in Computer Science or a closely related discipline by the start date.

The candidate must be grounded in the basics of computer vision, have solid mathematical and programming skills.

Preferably in Python, OpenCV, deep learning framework Pytorch or Tensorflow.

The candidate must be committed to scientific research and strong publications.

Avantages

• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Contribution to mutual insurance (subject to conditions)