Journal Home Online First Current Issue Archive For Authors Journal Information 中文版

Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering >> 2024, Volume 25, Issue 1 doi: 10.1631/FITEE.2300303

Controllable image generation based on causal representation learning

1. School of Big Data and Software Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 401331, China; 2. School of Materials and Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China;

Received: 2023-05-05 Accepted: 2024-02-19 Available online: 2024-02-19

Next Previous

Abstract

Artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC) has emerged as an indispensable tool for producing large-scale content in various forms, such as images, thanks to the significant role that AI plays in imitation and production. However, interpretability and controllability remain challenges. Existing AI methods often face challenges in producing images that are both flexible and controllable while considering causal relationships within the images. To address this issue, we have developed a novel method for causal controllable (CCIG) that combines with bi-directional generative adversarial networks (GANs). This approach enables humans to control image attributes while considering the rationality and interpretability of the generated images and also allows for the generation of counterfactual images. The key of our approach, CCIG, lies in the use of a module to learn the causal relationships between image attributes and joint optimization with the encoder, generator, and joint discriminator in the module. By doing so, we can learn causal representations in image’s latent space and use causal intervention operations to control . We conduct extensive experiments on a real-world dataset, CelebA. The experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of CCIG.

Related Research