# BootPIG: Bootstrapping Zero-shot Personalized Image Generation Capabilities in Pretrained Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13974 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13974/

## Key facts

- Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 49 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jan 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)
- Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs / [Self-improving MLLMs and synthetic data](https://mlsanity.com/synth/self-improving-mllms-and-synthetic-data/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [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)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [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)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10789/) (2022)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [GLIGEN: Open-Set Grounded Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07093/) (2023)
- [Muse: Text-To-Image Generation via Masked Generative Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00704/) (2023)
- [Scaling up GANs for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05511/) (2023)
- [BLIP-Diffusion: Pre-trained Subject Representation for Controllable Text-to-Image Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14720/) (2023)
- [ELITE: Encoding Visual Concepts into Textual Embeddings for Customized Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13848/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Less-to-More Generalization: Unlocking More Controllability by In-Context Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02160/) (2025)
- [UniReal: Universal Image Generation and Editing via Learning Real-world Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07774/) (2024)
- [LCM-Lookahead for Encoder-based Text-to-Image Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03620/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Self-Distillation for Zero-Shot Customized Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18616/) (2024)
- [Reflect-DiT: Inference-Time Scaling for Text-to-Image Diffusion Transformers via In-Context Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12271/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Personalized Content Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05538/) (2024)
- [USO: Unified Style and Subject-Driven Generation via Disentangled and Reward Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18966/) (2025)
- [Personalized Image Generation with Deep Generative Models: A Decade Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13081/) (2025)
- [LoRA.rar: Learning to Merge LoRAs via Hypernetworks for Subject-Style Conditioned Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05148/) (2024)
- [EMMA: Your Text-to-Image Diffusion Model Can Secretly Accept Multi-Modal Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09162/) (2024)
- [MagicFace: Training-free Universal-Style Human Image Customized Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07433/) (2024)
- [DreamCache: Finetuning-Free Lightweight Personalized Image Generation via Feature Caching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17786/) (2024)
- [Dimension-Reduction Attack! Video Generative Models are Experts on Controllable Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23325/) (2025)
- [FreeLoRA: Enabling Training-Free LoRA Fusion for Autoregressive Multi-Subject Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01792/) (2025)
- [IP-Prompter: Training-Free Theme-Specific Image Generation via Dynamic Visual Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15641/) (2025)
- [EchoGen: Generating Visual Echoes in Any Scene via Feed-Forward Subject-Driven Auto-Regressive Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26127/) (2025)
- [CoLoGen: Progressive Learning of Concept-Localization Duality for Unified Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22150/) (2026)
- [Beyond Inserting: Learning Identity Embedding for Semantic-Fidelity Personalized Diffusion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00631/) (2024)
- [MasterWeaver: Taming Editability and Face Identity for Personalized Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05806/) (2024)
- [EZIGen: Enhancing zero-shot personalized image generation with precise subject encoding and decoupled guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08091/) (2024)
- [AnyLogo: Symbiotic Subject-Driven Diffusion System with Gemini Status](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17740/) (2024)
- [Frame-wise Conditioning Adaptation for Fine-Tuning Diffusion Models in Text-to-Video Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12953/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Large Language Models for Multi-Subject In-Context Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07422/) (2026)
- [BRAT: Bonus oRthogonAl Token for Architecture Agnostic Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04785/) (2024)
- [DreamVAR: Taming Reinforced Visual Autoregressive Model for High-Fidelity Subject-Driven Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22507/) (2026)
- [ASTRA: Enhancing Multi-Subject Generation with Retrieval-Augmented Pose Guidance and Disentangled Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13938/) (2026)
- [Squeezing Capacity from Multimodal Large Language Models for Subject-driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26111/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent text-to-image generation models have demonstrated incredible success in generating images that faithfully follow input prompts. However, the requirement of using words to describe a desired concept provides limited control over the appearance of the generated concepts. In this work, we address this shortcoming by proposing an approach to enable personalization capabilities in existing text-to-image diffusion models. We propose a novel architecture (BootPIG) that allows a user to provide reference images of an object in order to guide the appearance of a concept in the generated images. The proposed BootPIG architecture makes minimal modifications to a pretrained text-to-image diffusion model and utilizes a separate UNet model to steer the generations toward the desired appearance. We introduce a training procedure that allows us to bootstrap personalization capabilities in the BootPIG architecture using data generated from pretrained text-to-image models, LLM chat agents, and image segmentation models. In contrast to existing methods that require several days of pretraining, the BootPIG architecture can be trained in approximately 1 hour. Experiments on the DreamBooth dataset demonstrate that BootPIG outperforms existing zero-shot methods while being comparable with test-time finetuning approaches. Through a user study, we validate the preference for BootPIG generations over existing methods both in maintaining fidelity to the reference object's appearance and aligning with textual prompts.