# Model Will Tell: Training Membership Inference for Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.08487 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08487/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 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 31 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/robustness-privacy-and-adversarial-aspects/)
- LLM safety and security / [Membership inference attacks](https://mlsanity.com/safety/membership-inference-attacks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [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)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05820/) (2016)
- [LAION-400M: Open Dataset of CLIP-Filtered 400 Million Image-Text Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02114/) (2021)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11565/) (2022)
- [Membership Inference Attacks From First Principles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03570/) (2021)
- [ML-Leaks: Model and Data Independent Membership Inference Attacks and Defenses on Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01246/) (2018)
- [Membership Inference Attacks on Machine Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07853/) (2021)
- [Stolen Memories: Leveraging Model Memorization for Calibrated White-Box Membership Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.11798/) (2019)
- [Are Diffusion Models Vulnerable to Membership Inference Attacks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01316/) (2023)
- [Reconstruction and Membership Inference Attacks against Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.03006/) (2019)
- [Person Image Synthesis via Denoising Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12500/) (2022)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03262/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Topology Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09591/) (2022)
- [Practical Blind Membership Inference Attack via Differential Comparisons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01341/) (2021)
- [DAE-Talker: High Fidelity Speech-Driven Talking Face Generation with Diffusion Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17550/) (2023)
- [Performing Co-Membership Attacks Against Deep Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09898/) (2018)
- [Diff-Privacy: Diffusion-based Face Privacy Protection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05330/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Safety at Scale: A Comprehensive Survey of Large Model and Agent Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05206/) (2025)
- [CDI: Copyrighted Data Identification in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12858/) (2024)
- [Responsible Diffusion: A Comprehensive Survey on Safety, Ethics, and Trust in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22723/) (2025)
- [Real-World Benchmarks Make Membership Inference Attacks Fail on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03640/) (2024)
- [Identity-Focused Inference and Extraction Attacks on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10177/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models pose risks of privacy breaches and copyright disputes, primarily stemming from the potential utilization of unauthorized data during the training phase. The Training Membership Inference (TMI) task aims to determine whether a specific sample has been used in the training process of a target model, representing a critical tool for privacy violation verification. However, the increased stochasticity inherent in diffusion renders traditional shadow-model-based or metric-based methods ineffective when applied to diffusion models. Moreover, existing methods only yield binary classification labels which lack necessary comprehensibility in practical applications. In this paper, we explore a novel perspective for the TMI task by leveraging the intrinsic generative priors within the diffusion model. Compared with unseen samples, training samples exhibit stronger generative priors within the diffusion model, enabling the successful reconstruction of substantially degraded training images. Consequently, we propose the Degrade Restore Compare (DRC) framework. In this framework, an image undergoes sequential degradation and restoration, and its membership is determined by comparing it with the restored counterpart. Experimental results verify that our approach not only significantly outperforms existing methods in terms of accuracy but also provides comprehensible decision criteria, offering evidence for potential privacy violations.