# DA-DGCEx: Ensuring Validity of Deep Guided Counterfactual Explanations With Distribution-Aware Autoencoder Loss

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.09062 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09062/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 17 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10045/) (2019)
- [Explaining Machine Learning Classifiers through Diverse Counterfactual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07697/) (2019)
- [Explanations based on the Missing: Towards Contrastive Explanations with Pertinent Negatives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07623/) (2018)
- [Interpretable Counterfactual Explanations Guided by Prototypes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02584/) (2019)
- [Preserving Causal Constraints in Counterfactual Explanations for Machine Learning Classifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03277/) (2019)
- [Generative Counterfactual Introspection for Explainable Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03077/) (2019)
- [CounteRGAN: Generating Realistic Counterfactuals with Residual Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.05199/) (2020)
- [Latent-CF: A Simple Baseline for Reverse Counterfactual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09301/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep Learning has become a very valuable tool in different fields, and no one doubts the learning capacity of these models. Nevertheless, since Deep Learning models are often seen as black boxes due to their lack of interpretability, there is a general mistrust in their decision-making process. To find a balance between effectiveness and interpretability, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is gaining popularity in recent years, and some of the methods within this area are used to generate counterfactual explanations. The process of generating these explanations generally consists of solving an optimization problem for each input to be explained, which is unfeasible when real-time feedback is needed. To speed up this process, some methods have made use of autoencoders to generate instant counterfactual explanations. Recently, a method called Deep Guided Counterfactual Explanations (DGCEx) has been proposed, which trains an autoencoder attached to a classification model, in order to generate straightforward counterfactual explanations. However, this method does not ensure that the generated counterfactual instances are close to the data manifold, so unrealistic counterfactual instances may be generated. To overcome this issue, this paper presents Distribution Aware Deep Guided Counterfactual Explanations (DA-DGCEx), which adds a term to the DGCEx cost function that penalizes out of distribution counterfactual instances.