mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

ChatFace: Chat-Guided Real Face Editing via Diffusion Latent Space Manipulation

arXiv 2305.14742 ↗First posted 24 May 2023cs.CVcited by 16

On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing

Abstract (arXiv)

Editing real facial images is a crucial task in computer vision with significant demand in various real-world applications. While GAN-based methods have showed potential in manipulating images especially when combined with CLIP, these methods are limited in their ability to reconstruct real images due to challenging GAN inversion capability. Despite the successful image reconstruction achieved by diffusion-based methods, there are still challenges in effectively manipulating fine-gained facial attributes with textual instructions.To address these issues and facilitate convenient manipulation of real facial images, we propose a novel approach that conduct text-driven image editing in the semantic latent space of diffusion model. By aligning the temporal feature of the diffusion model with the semantic condition at generative process, we introduce a stable manipulation strategy, which perform precise zero-shot manipulation effectively. Furthermore, we develop an interactive system named ChatFace, which combines the zero-shot reasoning ability of large language models to perform efficient manipulations in diffusion semantic latent space. This system enables users to perform complex multi-attribute manipulations through dialogue, opening up new possibilities for interactive image editing. Extensive experiments confirmed that our approach outperforms previous methods and enables precise editing of real facial images, making it a promising candidate for real-world applications. Project page: https://dongxuyue.github.io/chatface/

Key facts. Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 50 of its 56 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 May 2023.

Builds on

50 of 56 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
  2. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding23 May
  3. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr
  4. 2021Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models10 Nov
  5. 2021DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation6 Oct

Other references · 45

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  4. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
  5. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  6. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 13,958
  7. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  8. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,185
  9. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
  10. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
  11. 2022Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,603
  12. 2019Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGANcited by 3,580
33 more
  1. 2022Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Modelscited by 2,997
  2. 2017Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variationcited by 2,967
  3. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  4. 2023HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Facecited by 1,173
  5. 2021StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagerycited by 990
  6. 2023VideoChat: Chat-Centric Video Understandingcited by 851
  7. 2020Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translationcited by 727
  8. 2019Interpreting the Latent Space of GANs for Semantic Face Editingcited by 691
  9. 2019Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?cited by 675
  10. 2023Visual ChatGPT: Talking, Drawing and Editing with Visual Foundation Modelscited by 659
  11. 2021Designing an Encoder for StyleGAN Image Manipulationcited by 542
  12. 2021Diffusion Autoencoders: Toward a Meaningful and Decodable Representationcited by 447
  13. 2019Image2StyleGAN++: How to Edit the Embedded Images?cited by 356
  14. 2020StyleFlow: Attribute-conditioned Exploration of StyleGAN-Generated Images using Conditional Continuous Normalizing Flowscited by 348
  15. 2022Diffusion Models already have a Semantic Latent Spacecited by 324
  16. 2020Unsupervised Discovery of Interpretable Directions in the GAN Latent Spacecited by 288
  17. 2021ReStyle: A Residual-Based StyleGAN Encoder via Iterative Refinementcited by 248
  18. 2021EditGAN: High-Precision Semantic Image Editingcited by 156
  19. 2021Talk-to-Edit: Fine-Grained Facial Editing via Dialogcited by 102
  20. 2021Only a Matter of Style: Age Transformation Using a Style-Based Regression Modelcited by 92
  21. 2018Text-Adaptive Generative Adversarial Networks: Manipulating Images with Natural Languagecited by 90
  22. 2021HairCLIP: Design Your Hair by Text and Reference Imagecited by 79
  23. 2023ChatVideo: A Tracklet-centric Multimodal and Versatile Video Understanding Systemcited by 65
  24. 2021StyleMC: Multi-Channel Based Fast Text-Guided Image Generation and Manipulationcited by 40
  25. 2023Multimodal Procedural Planning via Dual Text-Image Promptingcited by 40
  26. 2021The Geometry of Deep Generative Image Models and its Applicationscited by 34
  27. 2023DisDiff: Unsupervised Disentanglement of Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 30
  28. 2023Unsupervised Discovery of Semantic Latent Directions in Diffusion Modelscited by 28
  29. 2022One Model to Edit Them All: Free-Form Text-Driven Image Manipulation with Semantic Modulationscited by 24
  30. 2022FEAT: Face Editing with Attentioncited by 16
  31. 2023ShiftDDPMs: Exploring Conditional Diffusion Models by Shifting Diffusion Trajectoriescited by 14
  32. 2022ManiCLIP: Multi-Attribute Face Manipulation from Textcited by 8
  33. 2023CoralStyleCLIP: Co-optimized Region and Layer Selection for Image Editingcited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 4; 2025: 6; 2026: 4.

16 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2024Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Surveycited by 212
  2. 2024DiffusionAct: Controllable Diffusion Autoencoder for One-shot Face Reenactmentcited by 14
  3. 2025TaxaDiffusion: Progressively Trained Diffusion Model for Fine-Grained Species Generationcited by 7
  4. 2023Unsupervised Discovery of Interpretable Directions in h-space of Pre-trained Diffusion Modelscited by 6
  5. 2025LaTo: Landmark-tokenized Diffusion Transformer for Fine-grained Human Face Editingcited by 5
  6. 2024M3Face: A Unified Multi-Modal Multilingual Framework for Human Face Generation and Editingcited by 3
  7. 2025MuseFace: Text-driven Face Editing via Diffusion-based Mask Generation Approachcited by 2
  8. 2025Flux-Sculptor: Text-Driven Rich-Attribute Portrait Editing through Decomposed Spatial Flow Controlcited by 2
  9. 2026PromptHub: Enhancing Multi-Prompt Visual In-Context Learning with Locality-Aware Fusion, Concentration and Alignmentcited by 2
  10. 2026TaxaAdapter: Vision Taxonomy Models are Key to Fine-grained Image Generation over the Tree of Lifecited by 2
  11. 2023CoIE: Chain-of-Instruct Editing for Multi-Attribute Face Manipulationcited by 1
  12. 2024Mitigating the Impact of Attribute Editing on Face Recognitioncited by 1
4 more
  1. 2025Joint Learning of Depth and Appearance for Portrait Image Animationcited by 1
  2. 2025My Emotion on your face: The use of Facial Keypoint Detection to preserve Emotions in Latent Space Editingcited by 0
  3. 2026A2BFR: Attribute-Aware Blind Face Restorationcited by 0
  4. 2026DiffMagicFace: Identity Consistent Facial Editing of Real Videoscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Controllable Face Synthesis with Semantic Latent Diffusion Models
  2. 2022Blended Latent Diffusion
  3. 2026LatRef-Diff: Latent and Reference-Guided Diffusion for Facial Attribute Editing and Style Manipulation
  4. 2024Revealing Directions for Text-guided 3D Face Editing
  5. 2023FaceDNeRF: Semantics-Driven Face Reconstruction, Prompt Editing and Relighting with Diffusion Models
  6. 2024ChatDiT: A Training-Free Baseline for Task-Agnostic Free-Form Chatting with Diffusion Transformers
  7. 2022LDEdit: Towards Generalized Text Guided Image Manipulation via Latent Diffusion Models
  8. 2026AttDiff-GAN: A Hybrid Diffusion-GAN Framework for Facial Attribute Editing