AUTHOR=Bhandarkawthekar Varad , Navamani T. M. , Sharma Rishabh , Shyamala K. TITLE=Design and development of an efficient RLNet prediction model for deepfake video detection JOURNAL=Frontiers in Big Data VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2025 YEAR=2025 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/big-data/articles/10.3389/fdata.2025.1569147 DOI=10.3389/fdata.2025.1569147 ISSN=2624-909X ABSTRACT=IntroductionThe widespread emergence of deepfake videos presents substantial challenges to the security and authenticity of digital content, necessitating robust detection methods. Deepfake detection remains challenging due to the increasing sophistication of forgery techniques. While existing methods often focus on spatial features, they may overlook crucial temporal information distinguishing real from fake content and need to investigate several other Convolutional Neural Network architectures on video-based deep fake datasets.MethodsThis study introduces an RLNet deep learning framework that utilizes ResNet and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks for high-precision deepfake video detection. The key objective is exploiting spatial and temporal features to discern manipulated content accurately. The proposed approach starts with preprocessing a diverse dataset with authentic and deepfake videos. The ResNet component captures intricate spatial anomalies at the frame level, identifying subtle manipulations. Concurrently, the LSTM network analyzes temporal inconsistencies across video sequences, detecting dynamic irregularities that signify deepfake content.Results and discussionExperimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the combined ResNet and LSTM approach, showing an accuracy of 95.2% and superior detection capabilities compared to existing methods like EfficientNet and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). The framework's ability to handle various deepfake techniques and compression levels highlights its versatility and robustness. This research significantly contributes to digital media forensics by providing an advanced tool for detecting deepfake videos, enhancing digital content's security and integrity. The efficacy and resilience of the proposed system are evidenced by deepfake detection, while our visualization-based interpretability provides insights into our model.