Subject-driven Text-to-Image Generation via Preference-based Reinforcement Learning

Text-to-image generative models have recently attracted considerable interest, enabling the synthesis of high-quality images from textual prompts. However, these models often lack the capability to generate specific subjects from given reference images or to synthesize novel renditions under varying conditions. Methods like DreamBooth and Subject-driven Text-to-Image (SuTI) have made significant progress in this area. Yet, both approaches primarily focus on enhancing similarity to reference images and require expensive setups, often overlooking the need for efficient training and avoiding overfitting to the reference images. In this work, we present the $\lambda$-Harmonic reward function, which provides a reliable reward signal and enables early stopping for faster training and effective regularization. By combining the Bradley-Terry preference model, the $\lambda$-Harmonic reward function also provides preference labels for subject-driven generation tasks. We propose Reward Preference Optimization (RPO), which offers a simpler setup (requiring only $3\%$ of the negative samples used by DreamBooth) and fewer gradient steps for fine-tuning. Unlike most existing methods, our approach does not require training a text encoder or optimizing text embeddings and achieves text-image alignment by fine-tuning only the U-Net component. Empirically, $\lambda$-Harmonic proves to be a reliable approach for model selection in subject-driven generation tasks. Based on preference labels and early stopping validation from the $\lambda$-Harmonic reward function, our algorithm achieves a state-of-the-art CLIP-I score of 0.833 and a CLIP-T score of 0.314 on DreamBench.

Paper

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Peer review

Reviewer u7k95/10 · confidence 3/52024-07-09

Summary

Summary: This paper proposed a method which utilized ALIGN model to calculate $\lambda$-Harmonic reward function and combine binary cross-entropy function and DPO as the preference loss to supervise image generation models.

Strengths

Strength: 1. The method is computation-efficient while achieving the highest scores on CLIP-I and CLIP-T. 2. Successfully extend preference optimization methods to Subject-driven image generation.

Weaknesses

Weakness: 1. I think there should be more visualization results showing the superiority of the proposed method. However, even considering the images in Appendix, the number of generated images is still not enough. 2. RPO does not achieve satisfactory performances in DINO scores. The authors have explained the reason, but I still wonder whether there is any method that could prevent the loss of detailed pixel-level information.

Questions

No question. Just hope the authors could provide more visualization examples and discuss more about DINO scores.

Rating

5

Confidence

3

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

Yes

Reviewer 5xjH5/10 · confidence 3/52024-07-13

Summary

The paper introduces a novel method for generating text-to-image outputs that incorporate specific subjects from reference images. The authors propose a λ-Harmonic reward function and a Reward Preference Optimization (RPO) algorithm, which simplifies the training process and enhances the model's ability to maintain subject fidelity while generating diverse and contextually accurate images. The approach outperforms existing methods like DreamBooth and SuTI in various metrics, demonstrating significant improvements in training efficiency and image quality.

Strengths

1. **Innovative Reward Function**: The introduction of the λ-Harmonic reward function is a notable advancement, providing a robust reward signal that facilitates early stopping and regularization, thus accelerating the training process. 2. **Efficient Training Process**: The proposed RPO method significantly reduces the computational resources required for training by only needing 3% of the negative samples used by DreamBooth and fewer gradient steps, making it highly efficient. 3. **Empirical Performance**: The method achieves state-of-the-art performance on the DreamBench dataset, with superior CLIP-I and CLIP-T scores, indicating strong text-to-image alignment and subject fidelity. 4. **Simplicity**: The approach simplifies the training pipeline by fine-tuning only the U-Net component of the diffusion model, avoiding the need for optimizing text embeddings or training a text encoder.

Weaknesses

1. **Limited Evaluation Metrics**: While the paper uses DINO and CLIP-I/CLIP-T scores, it would benefit from additional evaluation metrics that capture other aspects of image quality, such as perceptual quality or user satisfaction. 2. **Overfitting Risk**: Although the λ-Harmonic reward function helps in regularization, there is still a noted risk of overfitting, particularly in generating images with high text-to-image alignment but lower uniqueness in certain features.

Questions

How does the proposed method perform with completely unseen or highly imaginative prompts that deviate significantly from the training data?

Rating

5

Confidence

3

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

N/A

Reviewer BTXt5/10 · confidence 5/52024-07-13

Summary

This paper proposes a Reward Preference Optimization (RPO) method, introducing the 𝜆-harmonic reward function to address overfitting and accelerate the fine-tuning process in subject-driven text-to-image generation. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Strengths

1. By introducing the λ-harmonic reward function, this model can achieve simple and efficient subject-driven text-to-image generation. 2. Quantitative comparisons demonstrate that this model achieves superior text-alignment results.

Weaknesses

1. The novelty of the proposed method is limited for the following reasons. First, although this paper uses the weighted harmonic mean [ref-1] as the reward function, it is a classical Pythagorean mean. Second, the loss 𝐿_𝑝𝑒𝑟 is a simple variation of the binary cross-entropy and DPO. 2. The experimental results do not effectively demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method. Although the proposed RPO method performs better in text-alignment in quantitative comparisons, this improvement is not evident in Figure 3. Specifically, in the first and second rows, the terms "eating" and "on table" do not appear to be closely aligned. 3. The comparisons are unfair since this paper does not compare the proposed method with any reinforcement methods, such as DPO. 4. The ablation studies show the effectiveness of the loss 𝐿_𝑟𝑒𝑓. However, it is not defined in this paper. 5. More details about the CLIP and DINO models need to be provided, as stronger models may yield more detailed results, both in your findings and in compared results. [ref-1] Weighted Harmonic Means, Complex Anal. Oper. Theory (2017) 11:1715–1728.

Questions

Please see weaknesses.

Rating

5

Confidence

5

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

no

Reviewer Kj9e6/10 · confidence 4/52024-07-13

Summary

This paper presents a method for generating personalized images from text using the λ-Harmonic reward function in a system called Reward Preference Optimization (RPO). Specifically, RPO fine-tunes a pre-trained text-to-image diffusion model using a reinforcement-learning-based objective concerning with the harmonic averaged value of text similarity and image similarity. This objective is used in a reinforcement learning framework for diffusion models. The results demonstrate that the proposed techniques improve the performance of the DreamBooth baseline and alleviate the image overfitting problem.

Strengths

* The paper is well-structured and easy to follow. * The proposed λ-Harmonic reward function is reasonable and has achieved better results than the baseline.

Weaknesses

* The authors could introduce briefly how does the method support adjusting λ at the test time. How about the method comparing with adding classifier-based guidance? * The wall-clock time analysis of the proposed method against the baseline DreamBooth in training and sampling is missing. * The experimental analysis of why harmonic mean is used instead of arithmetic mean is missing. * Comparisons could be made more extensive. There are more state-of-the-art personalized generation methods nowadays like [a,b]. * The authors may want to compare with more baselines that also support adjusting the text-image-tradeoff at the test time [c,d,e]. * The motivation to alleviate the image overfitting and enhance the prompt adherence has been explored in [f]. Comparisons or at least some discussions are necessary. [a] Disenbooth: Identity-preserving disentangled tuning for subject-driven text-to-image generation, Chen et al., ICLR 2024. [b] Multi-concept customization of text-to-image diffusion, Kumari et al., CVPR 2023. [c] ELITE: Encoding Visual Concepts into Textual Embeddings for Customized Text-to-Image Generation, Wei et al., ICCV 2023. [d] IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models, Ye et al.. [e] SSR-Encoder: Encoding Selective Subject Representation for Subject-Driven Generation, Zhang et al., CVPR 2024. [f] PALP: Prompt Aligned Personalization of Text-to-Image Models, Tewel et al..

Questions

* The metrics evaluations in Tables 1 and 2 appear inconsistent, despite seemingly identical parameters (λval = 0.3). * Additionally, in the metrics ALIGN-I and ALIGN-T, I am unclear about the rationale behind adding "+1" to the similarity calculations.

Rating

6

Confidence

4

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

This paper have discussed it’s limitations.

Reviewer tGfs5/10 · confidence 4/52024-07-13

Summary

This paper proposes a harmonic reward function for text-to-image personalization. Specifically, it uses this reward function to perform early stopping and regularization. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Strengths

* Their proposed reward-based model selection and regularization are reasonable and compelling. * The generated images presented in the paper demonstrate superior text fidelity of the proposed method.

Weaknesses

* More baselines are needed. Specifically, since this paper is similar to DCO [1], a comparison with this method is needed. [1] Lee, Kyungmin, et al. "Direct consistency optimization for compositional text-to-image personalization." arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.12004 (2024).

Questions

What are the results when the lambda value of the harmonic reward function is not set to 0 in the preference loss during training?

Rating

5

Confidence

4

Soundness

3

Presentation

2

Contribution

3

Limitations

Yes.

Reviewer Kj9e2024-08-10

Thanks for the response especially the additional results, which alleviate some of my concerns. I have increased my score to reflect this. Nevertheless, I still think the insight of this paper is not so strong given the existence of [f].

Authorsrebuttal2024-08-10

Thank you again for taking the time to review our paper and for your valuable feedback. We are pleased to hear that the additional results addressed some of your concerns, and we appreciate your recognition of the improvements.

Area Chair Sxva2024-08-11

Reminder -- please reply to rebuttal

Dear Reviewers, Thank you for your comments. Please read through all the reviews and the rebuttal and see if authors' responses have addressed your and others' concerns. Best, AC

Reviewer BTXt2024-08-13

Thank you for your response. Most of my concerns have been addressed. While the novelty is somewhat incremental, I believe this is good work. Therefore, I’ve decided to raise my score to borderline accept in support of your efforts. Thank you for your hard work.

Area Chair Sxva2024-08-13

Please respond to the authors' rebuttal

Dear Reviewer tGfs, Thank you again for reviewing this paper. Since the reviewer-author discussion phase is closing soon, could you please respond to the authors' comments? Best, AC

Area Chair Sxva2024-08-13

Please respond to the authors' rebuttal

Dear Reviewer 5xjH, Thank you again for reviewing this paper. Since the reviewer-author discussion phase is closing soon, could you please respond to the authors' comments? Best, AC

Area Chair Sxva2024-08-13

Please respond to the authors' rebuttal

Dear Reviewer u7k9, Thank you again for reviewing this paper. Since the reviewer-author discussion phase is closing soon, could you please respond to the authors' comments? Best, AC

Reviewer 5xjH2024-08-13

Thank you for addressing most of my concerns. I have no major issues with the methods and experiments presented in the paper. As a result, I will maintain my current score.

Program Chairsdecision2024-09-25

Decision

Accept (poster)

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