mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Generated Distributions Are All You Need for Membership Inference Attacks Against Generative Models

arXiv 2310.19410 ↗First posted 30 Oct 2023cs.CR cs.CV cs.LGcited by 22

On the map: Diffusion models → Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Generative models have demonstrated revolutionary success in various visual creation tasks, but in the meantime, they have been exposed to the threat of leaking private information of their training data. Several membership inference attacks (MIAs) have been proposed to exhibit the privacy vulnerability of generative models by classifying a query image as a training dataset member or nonmember. However, these attacks suffer from major limitations, such as requiring shadow models and white-box access, and either ignoring or only focusing on the unique property of diffusion models, which block their generalization to multiple generative models. In contrast, we propose the first generalized membership inference attack against a variety of generative models such as generative adversarial networks, [variational] autoencoders, implicit functions, and the emerging diffusion models. We leverage only generated distributions from target generators and auxiliary non-member datasets, therefore regarding target generators as black boxes and agnostic to their architectures or application scenarios. Experiments validate that all the generative models are vulnerable to our attack. For instance, our work achieves attack AUC >0.99 against DDPM, DDIM, and FastDPM trained on CIFAR-10 and CelebA. And the attack against VQGAN, LDM (for the text-conditional generation), and LIIF achieves AUC >0.90. As a result, we appeal to our community to be aware of such privacy leakage risks when designing and publishing generative models.

Key facts. Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 45 of its 61 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Oct 2023.

Builds on

45 of 61 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Are Diffusion Models Vulnerable to Membership Inference Attacks?2 Feb
  2. 2023Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models30 Jan

Other references · 43

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  4. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  5. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,608
  6. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
  7. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,585
  8. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,355
  9. 2022Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,627
  10. 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,712
  11. 2014Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wildcited by 3,693
  12. 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,253
31 more
  1. 2018Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesiscited by 2,626
  2. 2016Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Modelscited by 2,281
  3. 2021LAION-400M: Open Dataset of CLIP-Filtered 400 Million Image-Text Pairscited by 1,555
  4. 2015LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loopcited by 1,355
  5. 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,295
  6. 2017High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANscited by 1,179
  7. 2016Colorful Image Colorizationcited by 1,114
  8. 2021StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagerycited by 991
  9. 2021Membership Inference Attacks From First Principlescited by 878
  10. 2021Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restorationcited by 816
  11. 2018Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 809
  12. 2020Learning Continuous Image Representation with Local Implicit Image Functioncited by 552
  13. 2018The Open Images Dataset V4: Unified image classification, object detection, and visual relationship detection at scalecited by 544
  14. 2018ML-Leaks: Model and Data Independent Membership Inference Attacks and Defenses on Machine Learning Modelscited by 498
  15. 2017Age Progression/Regression by Conditional Adversarial Autoencodercited by 429
  16. 2018MolGAN: An implicit generative model for small molecular graphscited by 393
  17. 2020Label-Only Membership Inference Attackscited by 388
  18. 2017Wasserstein Auto-Encoderscited by 373
  19. 2018Generative Adversarial Network in Medical Imaging: A Reviewcited by 257
  20. 2022MAT: Mask-Aware Transformer for Large Hole Image Inpaintingcited by 218
  21. 2020Swapping Autoencoder for Deep Image Manipulationcited by 215
  22. 2019Stolen Memories: Leveraging Model Memorization for Calibrated White-Box Membership Inferencecited by 175
  23. 2021On Fast Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 170
  24. 2020Membership Leakage in Label-Only Exposurescited by 168
  25. 2016Learning in Implicit Generative Modelscited by 125
  26. 2019Reconstruction and Membership Inference Attacks against Generative Modelscited by 122
  27. 2019Learning to Predict Layout-to-image Conditional Convolutions for Semantic Image Synthesiscited by 108
  28. 2021ML-Doctor: Holistic Risk Assessment of Inference Attacks Against Machine Learning Modelscited by 85
  29. 2021Membership Inference Attacks Against Recommender Systemscited by 57
  30. 2021Property Inference Attacks Against GANscited by 33
  31. 2017LOGAN: Membership Inference Attacks Against Generative Modelscited by 28

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 7; 2025: 9; 2026: 4.

22 papers.

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  1. 2023Black-box Membership Inference Attacks against Fine-tuned Diffusion Modelscited by 35
  2. 2024Attacks and Defenses for Generative Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 32
  3. 2024PROMPTFUZZ: Harnessing Fuzzing Techniques for Robust Testing of Prompt Injection in LLMscited by 17
  4. 2023ERASER: Machine Unlearning in MLaaS via an Inference Serving-Aware Approachcited by 15
  5. 2024Replication in Visual Diffusion Models: A Survey and Outlookcited by 11
  6. 2024Privacy-Preserving Low-Rank Adaptation against Membership Inference Attacks for Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 9
  7. 2025Rethinking Membership Inference Attacks Against Transfer Learningcited by 6
  8. 2024Understanding Data Importance in Machine Learning Attacks: Does Valuable Data Pose Greater Harm?cited by 5
  9. 2025ArtistAuditor: Auditing Artist Style Pirate in Text-to-Image Generation Modelscited by 5
  10. 2025SoK: Data Reconstruction Attacks Against Machine Learning Models: Definition, Metrics, and Benchmarkcited by 5
  11. 2026Membership Inference Attacks Against Fine-tuned Diffusion Language Modelscited by 5
  12. 2025Responsible Diffusion: A Comprehensive Survey on Safety, Ethics, and Trust in Diffusion Modelscited by 3
10 more
  1. 2025GenAI Confessions: Black-box Membership Inference for Generative Image Modelscited by 2
  2. 2025Membership Inference Attacks with False Discovery Rate Controlcited by 2
  3. 2026Inference Attacks Against Graph Generative Diffusion Modelscited by 2
  4. 2024Privacy Re-identification Attacks on Tabular GANscited by 1
  5. 2025SoK: Can Synthetic Images Replace Real Data? A Survey of Utility and Privacy of Synthetic Image Generationcited by 1
  6. 2025Assessing the Effectiveness of Membership Inference on Generative Musiccited by 1
  7. 2024EnTruth: Enhancing the Traceability of Unauthorized Dataset Usage in Text-to-image Diffusion Models with Minimal and Robust Alterationscited by 0
  8. 2025A new membership inference attack that spots memorization in generative and predictive models: Loss-Based with Reference Model algorithm (LBRM)cited by 0
  9. 2026Noise as a Probe: Membership Inference Attacks on Diffusion Models Leveraging Initial Noisecited by 0
  10. 2026One Framework for All: Cross-Modal Membership Inference for Generative Modelscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2022Generative Models with Information-Theoretic Protection Against Membership Inference Attacks
  2. 2023Towards More Realistic Membership Inference Attacks on Large Diffusion Models
  3. 2025The Hidden Cost of Modeling P(X): Vulnerability to Membership Inference Attacks in Generative Text Classifiers
  4. 2022Membership Inference Attacks Against Text-to-image Generation Models
  5. 2025On the MIA Vulnerability Gap Between Private GANs and Diffusion Models
  6. 2025Data-Free Model-Related Attacks: Unleashing the Potential of Generative AI
  7. 2022An Efficient Subpopulation-based Membership Inference Attack
  8. 2025When Privacy Isn't Synthetic: Hidden Data Leakage in Generative AI Models