Fusion: Practice and Applications FPA 2692-4048 2770-0070 10.54216/FPA https://www.americaspg.com/journals/show/3545 2018 2018 Artificial Intelligence Department, Libyan International University, Benghazi, Libya Sultan Sultan School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK Bander Ali Saleh Al Al-rimy Computer Department, Applied College, Najran University, Najran 66462 , Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Sultan Ahmed Almalki Computer Science Department, Faculty of Computing and Information, Al-Baha University, Al-Baha, 65779, Saudi Arabia Tami Abdulrahman Alghamdi Department of Computer Engineering, College of Computer Science and Information Technology, Majmaah University, Majmaah, 11952, Saudi Arabia Azan Hamad Alkhorem Department of Computer Science, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA Frederick T. Sheldon Steganography conceals ”secrets” within an convenient and expedient multimedia carrier. The carrier could be text (i.e., not plain text), images, audio andor video files (i.e., carrier channels). The fact that concealed information is contained in the otherwise ordinary and mundane carrier file is known only by the sender-receiver pair. Only they share the existence of the secret. Images are the most popular (i.e., multimedia) carriers because of their inherent property that enables better obfuscation. Content adaptive image steganography is a new trend in the field for messaging secrets inside unsuspected image file transfers. As the name suggests, the embedding locations are altered adaptively depending on the image content that optimizes the decision of choosing a location inside the carrier so that an embedding is not discernible (i.e., additive distortion is minimized). Herein, we critique the various approaches used for content-adaptive image steganography which can be broadly categorized as CNNbased, GAN-based, along with minimizing additive distortion function-based. We provide a brief historical account toward better anticipating the future research opportunities in terms of properties, and evaluation metrics. A summary table of these past and future directions is provided. Moreover, we highlight trends along with their concomitant advantages and disadvantages toward identifying opportunity gaps. 2025 2025 21 232 10.54216/FPA.180216 https://www.americaspg.com/articleinfo/3/show/3545