IC-1138Stable Diffusion simultaneously encodes multiple meanings of homograph concepts in a single representation

Hila Chefer, Oran Lang, Mor Geva, Volodymyr Polosukhin, Assaf Shocher, michal Irani, Inbar Mosseri, Lior Wolf

SourceThe Hidden Language of Diffusion Models

For polysemous prompts such as 'crane' (machine and bird), 'date' (fruit and romantic), 'big apple' (apple and New York City), 'bridge' (structure and link), and 'palm tree' (tree and coconut), Conceptor reveals that SD's internal representation incorporates both meanings at once. Coefficient manipulation shows that reducing one meaning's element (e.g., 'stork' from 'crane') alters the generated image in ways reflecting the other meaning (the machine's structure changes). In some cases both meanings appear as separate objects in the image (e.g., 'big apple' shows an apple and NYC), while in others they are fused into a single object (e.g., 'crane' borrows appearance from the machine and shape from the bird).

Evidence
correlational
Caveat
The finding is demonstrated on a small set of homograph examples (5-6 concepts shown in Fig. 3); the general prevalence of simultaneous encoding across all homographs is not quantified.
Model
Stable Diffusion
Methods
Conceptor [primary]
Related findings
IC-1137, IC-1139, IC-1140
Extraction
automatic-extraction