# Drag Your GAN: Interactive Point-based Manipulation on the Generative Image Manifold

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10973 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10973/

## Key facts

- Cited by 219 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12423/) (2021)
- [StarGAN v2: Diverse Image Synthesis for Multiple Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01865/) (2019)
- [FlowNet: Learning Optical Flow with Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06852/) (2015)
- [StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17249/) (2021)
- [FlowNet 2.0: Evolution of Optical Flow Estimation with Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01925/) (2016)
- [pi-GAN: Periodic Implicit Generative Adversarial Networks for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00926/) (2020)
- [Interpreting the Latent Space of GANs for Semantic Face Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10786/) (2019)
- [GRAF: Generative Radiance Fields for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02442/) (2020)
- [Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03189/) (2019)
- [GANSpace: Discovering Interpretable GAN Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02546/) (2020)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07035/) (2017)
- [StyleNeRF: A Style-based 3D-Aware Generator for High-resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08985/) (2021)
- [Pivotal Tuning for Latent-based Editing of Real Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05744/) (2021)
- [Closed-Form Factorization of Latent Semantics in GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06600/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 219)

- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [VACE: All-in-One Video Creation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07598/) (2025)
- [DragDiffusion: Harnessing Diffusion Models for Interactive Point-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14435/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17525/) (2024)
- [Motion-I2V: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Generation with Explicit Motion Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15977/) (2024)
- [DragonDiffusion: Enabling Drag-style Manipulation on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02421/) (2023)
- [Motion Prompting: Controlling Video Generation with Motion Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02700/) (2024)
- [In-Context LoRA for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23775/) (2024)
- [State of the Art on Diffusion Models for Visual Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07204/) (2023)
- [Understanding the Latent Space of Diffusion Models through the Lens of Riemannian Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12868/) (2023)
- [GaussCtrl: Multi-View Consistent Text-Driven 3D Gaussian Splatting Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08733/) (2024)
- [Robust Watermarking Using Generative Priors Against Image Editing: From Benchmarking to Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18775/) (2024)
- [Optimizing Diffusion Noise Can Serve As Universal Motion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11994/) (2023)
- [Human Motion Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10894/) (2023)
- [DiffEditor: Boosting Accuracy and Flexibility on Diffusion-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02583/) (2024)
- [MotionStream: Real-Time Video Generation with Interactive Motion Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01266/) (2025)
- [VideoSwap: Customized Video Subject Swapping with Interactive Semantic Point Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02087/) (2023)
- [SG-I2V: Self-Guided Trajectory Control in Image-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04989/) (2024)
- [The Blessing of Randomness: SDE Beats ODE in General Diffusion-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01410/) (2023)
- [Video Diffusion Models are Training-free Motion Interpreter and Controller](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14864/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Handles: Enabling 3D Edits for Diffusion Models by Lifting Activations to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02190/) (2023)
- [PromptMagician: Interactive Prompt Engineering for Text-to-Image Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09036/) (2023)
- [Readout Guidance: Learning Control from Diffusion Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02150/) (2023)
- [Drag Your Noise: Interactive Point-based Editing via Diffusion Semantic Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01050/) (2024)
- [Smooth Diffusion: Crafting Smooth Latent Spaces in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04410/) (2023)
- [Text2Earth: Unlocking Text-driven Remote Sensing Image Generation with a Global-Scale Dataset and a Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00895/) (2025)
- [Image Sculpting: Precise Object Editing with 3D Geometry Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01702/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Video Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07111/) (2024)
- [Wear-Any-Way: Manipulable Virtual Try-on via Sparse Correspondence Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12965/) (2024)
- [DragVideo: Interactive Drag-style Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02216/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Synthesizing visual content that meets users' needs often requires flexible and precise controllability of the pose, shape, expression, and layout of the generated objects. Existing approaches gain controllability of generative adversarial networks (GANs) via manually annotated training data or a prior 3D model, which often lack flexibility, precision, and generality. In this work, we study a powerful yet much less explored way of controlling GANs, that is, to "drag" any points of the image to precisely reach target points in a user-interactive manner, as shown in Fig.1. To achieve this, we propose DragGAN, which consists of two main components: 1) a feature-based motion supervision that drives the handle point to move towards the target position, and 2) a new point tracking approach that leverages the discriminative generator features to keep localizing the position of the handle points. Through DragGAN, anyone can deform an image with precise control over where pixels go, thus manipulating the pose, shape, expression, and layout of diverse categories such as animals, cars, humans, landscapes, etc. As these manipulations are performed on the learned generative image manifold of a GAN, they tend to produce realistic outputs even for challenging scenarios such as hallucinating occluded content and deforming shapes that consistently follow the object's rigidity. Both qualitative and quantitative comparisons demonstrate the advantage of DragGAN over prior approaches in the tasks of image manipulation and point tracking. We also showcase the manipulation of real images through GAN inversion.