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Concept Steerers: Leveraging K-Sparse Autoencoders for Controllable Generations (2501.19066v1)

Published 31 Jan 2025 in cs.CV

Abstract: Despite the remarkable progress in text-to-image generative models, they are prone to adversarial attacks and inadvertently generate unsafe, unethical content. Existing approaches often rely on fine-tuning models to remove specific concepts, which is computationally expensive, lack scalability, and/or compromise generation quality. In this work, we propose a novel framework leveraging k-sparse autoencoders (k-SAEs) to enable efficient and interpretable concept manipulation in diffusion models. Specifically, we first identify interpretable monosemantic concepts in the latent space of text embeddings and leverage them to precisely steer the generation away or towards a given concept (e.g., nudity) or to introduce a new concept (e.g., photographic style). Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that our approach is very simple, requires no retraining of the base model nor LoRA adapters, does not compromise the generation quality, and is robust to adversarial prompt manipulations. Our method yields an improvement of $\mathbf{20.01\%}$ in unsafe concept removal, is effective in style manipulation, and is $\mathbf{\sim5}$x faster than current state-of-the-art.

Summary

  • The paper introduces a novel framework using k-sparse autoencoders to isolate and steer interpretable latent concepts for controllable image generations.
  • It achieves a 20.01% improvement in unsafe content removal and a 5x increase in generation speed while preserving high image fidelity.
  • The approach eliminates the need for retraining or additional modules, offering an efficient solution for diverse text-to-image generation applications.

Concept Steerers: Leveraging K-Sparse Autoencoders for Controllable Generations

This paper presents an innovative approach to address the challenge of controlling the output of text-to-image generative models, specifically focusing on mitigating the generation of unsafe and unethical content. The proposed framework utilizes k-sparse autoencoders (k-SAEs) to identify and manipulate interpretable monosemantic concepts within the latent space of text embeddings, thereby allowing precise control over generated image content without altering the overall image quality.

Text-to-image models such as diffusion models have made significant advancements in creating diverse and photorealistic images for various applications. However, the capability of these models to occasionally produce content that includes nudity, violence, or other inappropriate material raises considerable ethical concerns. Traditional methods to circumvent these issues often involve fine-tuning the models, which is computationally intensive and can degrade image quality or prompt alignment. Other approaches, such as inference-time interventions, also come with limitations, such as increased computational overhead and potential misalignments with input prompts.

The proposed framework, termed "Concept Steerers," capitalizes on k-sparse autoencoders to isolate and steer specific semantic concepts during the image generation process. Once trained on text embeddings that represent unsafe concepts (e.g., nudity or violence), the k-SAE discerns latent directions corresponding to these concepts. This enables the model to either remove an unwanted concept or emphasize a desired style or attribute by adjusting a scalar parameter, significantly enhancing control over the image generation output.

The authors emphasize the method's simplicity, the lack of requirement for model retraining, and the fact that it does not need additional modules like LoRA adapters, thus making it efficient and applicable across various models without additional training data. The experimental results demonstrate a substantial improvement of 20.01% in the removal of unsafe content and a speed increase of approximately 5x compared to contemporary methods. Moreover, the approach maintains high fidelity in terms of FID and CLIP scores, indicating the preservation of visual quality and semantic alignment with the input prompts.

This research delineates several key contributions:

  • Identification of monosemantic, interpretable concepts within text-to-image latent spaces using k-SAEs.
  • Presentation of a framework that achieves state-of-the-art performance in content moderation tasks without compromising on generation quality or speed.
  • Demonstrated robustness against adversarial manipulations, which are commonly employed to bypass existing safety measures.
  • Evidence that the framework can manipulate photographic styles and object attributes in a controlled manner, opening the door for creative applications in digital content creation.

From a practical perspective, this framework can significantly impact the deployment of AI in industries that require stringent content moderation, such as advertising, gaming, or media. Theoretically, it prompts further investigation into the interpretability of AI models and the precise control over latent spaces, extending beyond mere content moderation to broader applications, including artistic style transfer and object attribute modifications.

Future work might explore steering more complex or abstract concepts by integrating visual embeddings or offering users more granular control over specific image regions. Additionally, further research could address the scalability of this approach to even larger models or diverse datasets, enhancing the universality and robustness of k-Sparse autoencoders in AI-driven content generation.

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