GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
GoHD: Gaze-oriented and Highly Disentangled Portrait Animation with Rhythmic Poses and Realistic Expressions
Authors: Ziqi Zhou; Weize Quan; Hailin Shi; Wei Li; Lili Wang; Dong-Ming Yan
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Audio-driven talking head generation necessitates seamless integration of audio and visual data amidst the challenges posed by diverse input portraits and intricate correlations between audio and facial motions. In response, we propose a robust framework GoHD designed to produce highly realistic, expressive, and controllable portrait videos from any reference identity with any motion. GoHD innovates with three key modules: Firstly, an animation module utilizing latent navigation is introduced to improve the generalization ability across unseen input styles. This module achieves high disentanglement of motion and identity, and it also incorporates gaze orientation to rectify unnatural eye movements that were previously overlooked. Secondly, a conformer-structured conditional diffusion model is designed to guarantee head poses that are aware of prosody. Thirdly, to estimate lip-synchronized and realistic expressions from the input audio within limited training data, a two-stage training strategy is devised to decouple frequent and frame-wise lip motion distillation from the generation of other more temporally dependent but less audio-related motions, e.g., blinks and frowns. Extensive experiments validate GoHD's advanced generalization capabilities, demonstrating its effectiveness in generating realistic talking face results on arbitrary subjects.
MultiBooth: Towards Generating All Your Concepts in an Image from Text
Authors: Chenyang Zhu; Kai Li; Yue Ma; Chunming He; Xiu Li
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: This paper introduces MultiBooth, a method that generates images from texts containing various concepts from users.Despite diffusion models bringing significant advancements for customized text-to-image generation, existing methods often struggle with multi-concept scenarios due to low concept fidelity and high inference cost. MultiBooth addresses these issues by dividing the multi-concept generation process into two phases: a single-concept learning phase and a multi-concept integration phase. During the single-concept learning phase, we employ a multi-modal image encoder and an efficient concept encoding technique to learn a concise and discriminative representation for each concept. In the multi-concept integration phase, we use bounding boxes to define the generation area for each concept within the cross-attention map. This method enables the creation of individual concepts within their specified regions, thereby facilitating the formation of multi-concept images. This strategy not only improves concept fidelity but also reduces additional inference cost. MultiBooth surpasses various baselines in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations, showcasing its superior performance and computational efficiency.
Adaptive Prototype Replay for Class Incremental Semantic Segmentation
Authors: Guilin Zhu; Dongyue Wu; Changxin Gao; Runmin Wang; Weidong Yang; Nong Sang
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Class incremental semantic segmentation (CISS) aims to segment new classes during continual steps while preventing the forgetting of old knowledge. Existing methods alleviate catastrophic forgetting by replaying distributions of previously learned classes using stored prototypes or features. However, they overlook a critical issue: in CISS, the representation of class knowledge is updated continuously through incremental learning, whereas prototype replay methods maintain fixed prototypes. This mismatch between updated representation and fixed prototypes limits the effectiveness of the prototype replay strategy. To address this issue, we propose the Adaptive prototype replay (Adapter) for CISS in this paper. Adapter comprises an adaptive deviation compensation (ADC) strategy and an uncertainty-aware constraint (UAC) loss. Specifically, the ADC strategy dynamically updates the stored prototypes based on the estimated representation shift distance to match the updated representation of old class. The UAC loss reduces prediction uncertainty, aggregating discriminative features to aid in generating compact prototypes. Additionally, we introduce a compensation-based prototype similarity discriminative (CPD) loss to ensure adequate differentiation between similar prototypes, thereby enhancing the efficiency of the adaptive prototype replay strategy. Extensive experiments on Pascal VOC and ADE20K datasets demonstrate that Adapter achieves state-of-the-art results and proves effective across various CISS tasks, particularly in challenging multi-step scenarios.
Optimizing Label Assignment for Weakly Supervised Person Search
Authors: Haiyang Zhu; Xi Yang; Nannan Wang
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Weakly supervised person search aims to detect and match individuals using only bounding box annotations jointly. The existing methods mainly alternate between the clustering stage and the training stage, where the former is responsible for instance level label allocation tasks and the latter needs to undertake proposal level label allocation tasks. In the clustering phase, the conventional use of the DBSCAN algorithm for clustering pedestrian instance features often neglects key contextual information such as scene context and relative positioning of individuals. During the training phase, the Region Proposal Network assigns labels based on the MaxIoU, which tends to produce locally ambiguous labels. Finally, the proposals updated to the memory bank with extensive background information tend to interfere with the task of pseudo-label generation. To address these issues, this paper proposes an Optimizing Label Assignment (OLA) for weakly supervised person search. Firstly, in the clustering phase, Context Aware Clustering is introduced to integrate contextual information and constraints, enhancing the accuracy of clustering. Secondly, in the training phase, we adopt Prototype Matching based on Optimal Transport theory to optimize label distribution from a global perspective. Furthermore, we propose Dual Memory Bank Enhancement that effectively enhances the accuracy of label assignment. Extensive experiments conducted on the CUHK-SYSU and PRW datasets demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in weakly supervised person search.
TAMER: Tree-Aware Transformer for Handwritten Mathematical Expression Recognition
Authors: Jianhua Zhu; Wenqi Zhao; Yu Li; Xingjian Hu; Liangcai Gao
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Handwritten Mathematical Expression Recognition (HMER) has extensive applications in automated  grading and office automation. However, existing sequence-based decoding methods, which directly predict LaTeX sequences, struggle to understand and model the inherent tree structure of LaTeX and often fail to ensure syntactic correctness in the decoded results. To address these challenges, we propose a novel model named TAMER (Tree-Aware Transformer) for handwritten mathematical expression recognition. TAMER  introduces an innovative Tree-aware Module while maintaining the flexibility and efficient training of Transformer. TAMER combines the advantages of both sequence decoding and tree decoding models by jointly optimizing sequence prediction and tree structure prediction tasks, which enhances the model's understanding and generalization of complex mathematical expression structures. During inference, TAMER  employs a Tree Structure Prediction Scoring Mechanism to improve the structural validity of the generated LaTeX sequences. Experimental results on CROHME datasets demonstrate that TAMER outperforms traditional sequence decoding and tree decoding models, especially in handling complex mathematical structures, achieving state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance.
Two-stream Beats One-stream: Asymmetric Siamese Network for Efficient Visual Tracking
Authors: Jiawen Zhu; Huayi Tang; Xin Chen; Xinying Wang; Dong Wang; Huchuan Lu
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Efficient tracking has garnered attention for its ability to operate on resource-constrained platforms for real-world deployment beyond desktop GPUs. Current efficient trackers mainly follow precision-oriented trackers, adopting a one-stream framework with lightweight modules. However, blindly adhering to the one-stream paradigm may not be optimal, as incorporating template computation in every frame leads to redundancy, and pervasive semantic interaction between template and search region places stress on edge devices. In this work, we propose a novel asymmetric Siamese tracker named AsymTrack for efficient tracking. AsymTrack disentangles template and search streams into separate branches, with template computing only once during initialization to generate modulation signals. Building on this architecture, we devise an efficient template modulation mechanism to unidirectional inject crucial cues into the search features, and design an object perception enhancement module that integrates abstract semantics and local details to overcome the limited representation in lightweight tracker. Extensive experiments demonstrate that AsymTrack offers superior speed-precision trade-offs across different platforms compared to the current state-of-the-arts. For instance, AsymTrack-T achieves 60.8% AUC on LaSOT and 224/81/84 FPS on GPU/CPU/AGX, surpassing HiT-Tiny by 6.0% AUC with higher speeds.
A Lottery Ticket Hypothesis Approach with Sparse Fine-tuning and MAE for Image Forgery Detection and Localization
Authors: Jiaying Zhu; Dong Li; Xueyang Fu; Gege Shi; Jie Xiao; Aiping Liu; Zheng-Jun Zha
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: The rise in sophisticated image forgery techniques, driven by advancements in image editing and generation, has posed new security challenges. Traditional methods, designed for specific tampering artifacts, struggle with out-of-distribution image forgery detection. In this paper, we propose a shift in paradigm, placing greater emphasis on the universal characteristics of authentic images, as opposed to solely focusing on specific forgery signals. We introduce an enhancement to the Masked Autoencoder (MAE), aptly termed the Forgery MAE (FMAE). This modification retains the inherent characteristics of natural images while integrating multi-source forgery information. Our implementation involves applying the lottery ticket hypothesis during pre-training to identify forgery-sensitive parameters, followed by their sparse fine-tuning to target the forgery detection and localization task. Concurrently, we develop a ``mixture of experts'' noise extractor to compile multi-source forgery data. Our FMAE effectively extracts forgery features and shows strong resilience against unseen forgeries. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets confirm our method's superior accuracy and generalization capability over existing techniques.
Large Images Are Gaussians: High-Quality Large Image Representation with Levels of 2D Gaussian Splatting
Authors: Lingting Zhu; Guying Lin; Jinnan Chen; Xinjie Zhang; Zhenchao Jin; Zhao Wang; Lequan Yu
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: While Implicit Neural Representations (INRs) have demonstrated significant success in image representation, they are often hindered by large training memory and slow decoding speed. Recently, Gaussian Splatting (GS) has emerged as a promising solution in 3D reconstruction due to its highquality novel view synthesis and rapid rendering capabilities, positioning it as a valuable tool for a broad spectrum of applications. In particular, a GS-based representation, 2DGS, has shown potential for image fitting. In our work, we present Large Images are Gaussians (LIG), which delves deeper into the application of 2DGS for image representations, addressing the challenge of fitting large images with 2DGS in the situation of numerous Gaussian points, through two distinct modifications: 1) we adopt a variant of representation and optimization strategy, facilitating the fitting of a large number of Gaussian points; 2) we propose a Level-of-Gaussian approach for reconstructing both coarse low-frequency initialization and fine high-frequency details. Consequently, we successfully represent large images as Gaussian points and achieve high-quality large image representation, demonstrating its efficacy across various types of large images.
A Comprehensive Overhaul of Multimodal Assistant with Small Language Models
Authors: Minjie Zhu; Yichen Zhu; Ning Liu; Xin Liu; Zhiyuan Xu; Chaomin Shen; Yaxin Peng
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have showcased impressive skills in tasks related to visual understanding and reasoning. Yet, their widespread application faces obstacles due to the high computational demands during both the training and inference phases, restricting their use to a limited audience within the research and user communities. In this paper, we investigate the design aspects of Multimodal Small Language Models (MSLMs) and propose an efficient multimodal assistant named Mipha, which is designed to create synergy among various aspects: visual representation, language models, and optimization strategies. We show that without increasing the volume of training data, our Mipha-3B outperforms the state-of-the-art large MLLMs, especially LLaVA-1.5-13B, on multiple benchmarks. Through detailed discussion, we provide insights and guidelines for developing strong MSLMs that rival the capabilities of MLLMs.
Thin-Plate Spline-based Interpolation for Animation Line Inbetweening
Authors: Tianyi Zhu; Wei Shang; Dongwei Ren
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Animation line inbetweening is a crucial step in animation production aimed at enhancing animation fluidity by predicting intermediate line arts between two key frames. 
However, existing methods face challenges in effectively addressing sparse pixels and significant motion in line art key frames. 
In literature, Chamfer Distance (CD) is commonly adopted for evaluating inbetweening performance. 
Despite achieving favorable CD values, existing methods often generate interpolated frames with line disconnections, especially for scenarios involving large motion.  
Motivated by this observation, we propose a simple yet effective interpolation method for animation line inbetweening that adopts thin-plate spline-based transformation to estimate coarse motion more accurately by modeling the keypoint correspondence between two key frames, particularly for large motion scenarios.
Building upon the coarse estimation, a motion refine module is employed to further enhance motion details before final frame interpolation using a simple UNet model.
Furthermore, to more accurately assess the performance of animation line inbetweening, we refine the CD metric and introduce a novel metric termed Weighted Chamfer Distance, which demonstrates a higher consistency with visual perception quality. Additionally, we incorporate Earth Mover's Distance and conduct user study to provide a more comprehensive evaluation.
Our method outperforms existing approaches by delivering high-quality interpolation results with enhanced fluidity.
Mesh Watermark Removal Attack and Mitigation: A Novel Perspective of Function Space
Authors: Xingyu Zhu; Guanhui Ye; Chengdong Dong; Xiapu Luo; Shiyao Zhang; Xuetao Wei
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Mesh watermark embeds secret messages in 3D meshes and decodes the message from watermarked meshes for ownership verification. Current watermarking methods directly hide secret messages in vertex and face sets of meshes. However, mesh is a discrete representation that uses vertex and face sets to describe a continuous signal, which can be discretized in other discrete representations with different vertex and face sets. This raises the question of whether the watermark can still be verified on the different discrete representations of the watermarked mesh. We conduct this research in an attack-then-defense manner by proposing a novel function space mesh watermark removal attack FuncEvade and then mitigating it through function space mesh watermarking FuncMark. In detail, FuncEvade generates a different discrete representation of a watermarked mesh by extracting it from the signed distance function of the watermarked mesh. We observe that the generated mesh can evade ALL previous watermarking methods. FuncMark mitigates FuncEvade by watermarking signed distance function through message-guided deformation. Such deformation can survive isosurfacing and thus be inherited by the extracted meshes for further watermark decoding. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FuncEvade achieves 100% evasion rate among all previous watermarking methods while achieving only 0.3% evasion rate on FuncMark. Besides, our FuncMark performs similarly on other metrics compared to state-of-the-art mesh watermarking methods.
DreaMark: Rooting Watermark in Score Distillation Sampling Generated Neural Radiance Fields
Authors: Xingyu Zhu; Xiapu Luo; Xuetao Wei
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Recent advancements in text-to-3D generation can generate neural radiance fields (NeRFs) with score distillation sampling, enabling 3D asset creation without real-world data capture. With the rapid advancement in NeRF generation quality, protecting the copyright of the generated NeRF has become increasingly important. While prior works can watermark NeRFs in a post-generation way, they suffer from two vulnerabilities. First, a delay lies between NeRF generation and watermarking because the secret message is embedded into the NeRF model post-generation through fine-tuning. Second, generating a non-watermarked NeRF as an intermediate creates a potential vulnerability for theft. To address both issues, we propose Dreamark to embed a secret message by backdooring the NeRF during NeRF generation. In detail, we first pre-train a watermark decoder. Then, Dreamark generates backdoored NeRFs in a way that the target secret message can be verified by the pre-trained watermark decoder on an arbitrary trigger viewport. We evaluate the generation quality and watermark robustness against image- and model-level attacks. Extensive experiments show that the watermarking process will not degrade the generation quality, and the watermark achieves 90+% accuracy among both image-level attacks (e.g., Gaussian noise) and model-level attacks (e.g., pruning attack).
Mesoscopic Insights: Orchestrating Multi-Scale & Hybrid Architecture for Image Manipulation Localization
Authors: Xuekang Zhu; Xiaochen Ma; Lei Su; Zhuohang Jiang; Bo Du; Xiwen Wang; Zeyu Lei; Wentao Feng; Chi-Man Pun; Ji-Zhe Zhou
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: The mesoscopic level serves as a bridge between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds, addressing gaps overlooked by both. Image manipulation localization (IML), a crucial technique to pursue truth from fake images, has long relied on low-level (microscopic-level) traces. However, in practice, most tampering aims to deceive the audience by altering image semantics. As a result, manipulation commonly occurs at the object level (macroscopic level), which is equally important as microscopic traces. Therefore, integrating these two levels into the mesoscopic level presents a new perspective for IML research. Inspired by this, our paper explores how to simultaneously construct mesoscopic representations of micro and macro information for IML  and introduces the Mesorch architecture to orchestrate both. Specifically, this architecture i) combines Transformers and CNNs in parallel, with Transformers extracting macro information and CNNs capturing micro details, and ii) explores across different scales, assessing micro and macro information seamlessly. Additionally, based on the Mesorch architecture, the paper introduces two baseline models aimed at solving IML tasks through mesoscopic representation. Extensive experiments across four datasets have demonstrated that our models surpass the current state-of-the-art in terms of performance, computational complexity, and robustness.
Exploring Task-Level Optimal Prompts for Visual In-Context Learning
Authors: Yan Zhu; Huan Ma; Changqing Zhang
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: With the development of Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) in recent years, Visual In-Context Learning (VICL) has become a better choice compared to modifying models in most scenarios. Different from retraining or fine-tuning models, VICL does not require modifications to the model's weights and architecture, and only needs a prompt with demonstrations to teach VFM how to solve tasks. Currently, significant computational cost for finding optimal prompts for every test sample hinders the deployment of VICL, as determining which demonstrations to use for constructing the prompt is very costly. In this paper, however, we find a counterintuitive phenomenon that most test samples actually achieve optimal performance under the same prompts, and searching for sample-level prompts only costs much time but results in completely identical prompts actually. Therefore, we propose task-level prompting to reduce the cost of searching for prompts during the inference stage and introduce two time-saving yet effective task-level prompt search strategies accordingly. Extensive experimental results show that our proposed method can identify near-optimal prompts and reach the best VICL performance with a minimal cost that prior work has never achieved.
MUC: Mixture of Uncalibrated Cameras for Robust 3D Human Body Reconstruction
Authors: Yitao Zhu; Sheng Wang; Mengjie Xu; Zixu Zhuang; Zhixin Wang; Kaidong Wang; Han Zhang; Qian Wang
Venue: AAAI 2025 (main)

Abstract: Multiple cameras can provide comprehensive multi-view video coverage of a person. Fusing this multi-view data is crucial for tasks like behavioral analysis, although it traditionally requires camera calibration—a process that is often complex. Moreover, previous studies have overlooked the challenges posed by self-occlusion under multiple views and the continuity of human body shape estimation.
In this study, we introduce a method to reconstruct the 3D human body from multiple uncalibrated camera views. Initially, we utilize a pre-trained human body encoder to process each camera view individually, enabling the reconstruction of human body models and parameters for each view along with predicted camera positions.
Rather than merely averaging the models across views, we develop a neural network trained to assign weights to individual views for all human body joints, based on the estimated distribution of joint distances from each camera.
Additionally, we focus on the mesh surface of the human body for dynamic fusion, allowing for the seamless integration of facial expressions and body shape into a unified human body model.
Our method has shown excellent performance in reconstructing the human body on two public datasets, advancing beyond previous work from the SMPL model to the SMPL-X model. This extension incorporates more complex hand poses and facial expressions, enhancing the detail and accuracy of the reconstructions. Crucially, it supports the flexible ad-hoc deployment of any number of cameras, offering significant potential for various applications.