# CAT: Contrastive Adapter Training for Personalized Image Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07554 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07554/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 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 31 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16512/) (2023)
- [Few-Shot Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning is Better and Cheaper than In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05638/) (2022)
- [LLaMA-Adapter: Efficient Fine-tuning of Language Models with Zero-init Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16199/) (2023)
- [MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08465/) (2023)
- [When and why vision-language models behave like bags-of-words, and what to do about it?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01936/) (2022)
- [Winoground: Probing Vision and Language Models for Visio-Linguistic Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03162/) (2022)
- [Parameter-efficient Multi-task Fine-tuning for Transformers via Shared Hypernetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04489/) (2021)
- [Break-A-Scene: Extracting Multiple Concepts from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16311/) (2023)
- [Controlling Text-to-Image Diffusion by Orthogonal Finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07280/) (2023)
- [StyleDrop: Text-to-Image Generation in Any Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00983/) (2023)
- [NerfDiff: Single-image View Synthesis with NeRF-guided Distillation from 3D-aware Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10109/) (2023)
- [Single-Stage Diffusion NeRF: A Unified Approach to 3D Generation and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06714/) (2023)
- [Training-Free Consistent Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03286/) (2024)
- [Navigating Text-To-Image Customization: From LyCORIS Fine-Tuning to Model Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14859/) (2023)
- [OMG: Occlusion-friendly Personalized Multi-concept Generation in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10983/) (2024)
- [The Chosen One: Consistent Characters in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10093/) (2023)

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

- [DreamBench++: A Human-Aligned Benchmark for Personalized Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16855/) (2024)
- [ImageGen-CoT: Enhancing Text-to-Image In-context Learning with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19312/) (2025)
- [DragText: Rethinking Text Embedding in Point-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17843/) (2024)
- [DreamRunner: Fine-Grained Compositional Story-to-Video Generation with Retrieval-Augmented Motion Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16657/) (2024)
- [RefVNLI: Towards Scalable Evaluation of Subject-driven Text-to-image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17502/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The emergence of various adapters, including Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) applied from the field of natural language processing, has allowed diffusion models to personalize image generation at a low cost. However, due to the various challenges including limited datasets and shortage of regularization and computation resources, adapter training often results in unsatisfactory outcomes, leading to the corruption of the backbone model's prior knowledge. One of the well known phenomena is the loss of diversity in object generation, especially within the same class which leads to generating almost identical objects with minor variations. This poses challenges in generation capabilities. To solve this issue, we present Contrastive Adapter Training (CAT), a simple yet effective strategy to enhance adapter training through the application of CAT loss. Our approach facilitates the preservation of the base model's original knowledge when the model initiates adapters. Furthermore, we introduce the Knowledge Preservation Score (KPS) to evaluate CAT's ability to keep the former information. We qualitatively and quantitatively compare CAT's improvement. Finally, we mention the possibility of CAT in the aspects of multi-concept adapter and optimization.