# Constructing Semantics-Aware Adversarial Examples with a Probabilistic Perspective

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00353 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00353/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [Theoretically Principled Trade-off between Robustness and Accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08573/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Machine Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01236/) (2016)
- [Ensemble Adversarial Training: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07204/) (2017)
- [Provable defenses against adversarial examples via the convex outer adversarial polytope](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00851/) (2017)
- [Defense-GAN: Protecting Classifiers Against Adversarial Attacks Using Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06605/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Examples Improve Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09665/) (2019)
- [How to Train Your Energy-Based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03288/) (2021)
- [Non-convex learning via Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics: a nonasymptotic analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03849/) (2017)
- [Spatially Transformed Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02612/) (2018)
- [Constructing Unrestricted Adversarial Examples with Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07894/) (2018)
- [Noise2Score: Tweedie's Approach to Self-Supervised Image Denoising without Clean Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07009/) (2021)
- [Global Convergence of Langevin Dynamics Based Algorithms for Nonconvex Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06618/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Models for Imperceptible and Transferable Adversarial Attack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08192/) (2023)
- [ColorFool: Semantic Adversarial Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10891/) (2019)
- [Semantic Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00499/) (2018)
- [Unrestricted Adversarial Examples via Semantic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06347/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Making Every Step Effective: Jailbreaking Large Vision-Language Models Through Hierarchical KV Equalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11750/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Inter-LoRA Orthogonality in Adapter Merging: Insights from Orthogonal Monte Carlo Dropout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03262/) (2025)
- [Tit-for-Tat: Safeguarding Large Vision-Language Models Against Jailbreak Attacks via Adversarial Defense](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11619/) (2025)
- [AEGIS: A Semantic GAN and Evidential Learning Frameworkfor Robust Adversarial Detection in Vision Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28416/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a probabilistic perspective on adversarial examples, allowing us to embed subjective understanding of semantics as a distribution into the process of generating adversarial examples, in a principled manner. Despite significant pixel-level modifications compared to traditional adversarial attacks, our method preserves the overall semantics of the image, making the changes difficult for humans to detect. This extensive pixel-level modification enhances our method's ability to deceive classifiers designed to defend against adversarial attacks. Our empirical findings indicate that the proposed methods achieve higher success rates in circumventing adversarial defense mechanisms, while remaining difficult for human observers to detect.