# SliderSpace: Decomposing the Visual Capabilities of Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01639 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01639/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 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 40 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2025.

## 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 40)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03832/) (2015)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17249/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03189/) (2019)
- [GANSpace: Discovering Interpretable GAN Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02546/) (2020)
- [Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03027/) (2023)
- [Scaling up GANs for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05511/) (2023)
- [InterFaceGAN: Interpreting the Disentangled Face Representation Learned by GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09635/) (2020)
- [StyleFlow: Attribute-conditioned Exploration of StyleGAN-Generated Images using Conditional Continuous Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02401/) (2020)
- [InstantBooth: Personalized Text-to-Image Generation without Test-Time Finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03411/) (2023)
- [DreamSim: Learning New Dimensions of Human Visual Similarity using Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09344/) (2023)
- [StyleSpace Analysis: Disentangled Controls for StyleGAN Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12799/) (2020)
- [PhotoMaker: Customizing Realistic Human Photos via Stacked ID Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04461/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Distilling Diversity and Control in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10637/) (2025)
- [Kontinuous Kontext: Continuous Strength Control for Instruction-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08532/) (2025)
- [SliderEdit: Continuous Image Editing with Fine-Grained Instruction Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.09715/) (2025)
- [It's Never Too Late: Noise Optimization for Collapse Recovery in Trained Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00090/) (2025)
- [SAEdit: Token-level control for continuous image editing via Sparse AutoEncoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05081/) (2025)
- [A Course Correction in Steerability Evaluation: Revealing Miscalibration and Side Effects in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23816/) (2025)
- [SLICE: Semantic Latent Injection via Compartmentalized Embedding for Image Watermarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12749/) (2026)
- [Continuous Control of Editing Models via Adaptive-Origin Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03826/) (2026)
- [STRIDE: Training-Free Diversity Guidance via PCA-Directed Feature Perturbation in Single-Step Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11494/) (2026)
- [ELROND: Exploring and decomposing intrinsic capabilities of diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10216/) (2026)
- [Coffee: Controllable Diffusion Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14113/) (2025)
- [PixelSmile: Toward Fine-Grained Facial Expression Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25728/) (2026)
- [TokenDial: Continuous Attribute Control for Text-to-Video Generation in Visual Dial Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27520/) (2026)
- [Explore or Converge? Stage-Guided Per-Step Optimization for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06768/) (2026)
- [Probing Perceptual Priors of MLLMs via Gibbs Sampling with Interpretable Generative Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.27727/) (2026)
- [CREward: A Type-Specific Creativity Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19995/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Global Text Conditioning in Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09268/) (2026)
- [Style-Aware Gloss Control for Generative Non-Photorealistic Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16611/) (2026)
- [Show Me Examples: Inferring Visual Concepts from Image Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02402/) (2026)
- [Latent-Identity Tuning in Text-to-Image Personalization Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.11885/) (2026)
- [Contrastive-Augmented Flow Matching for Style-Content Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12404/) (2026)
- [RankT2I: A Submodular Framework for Discovering Interpretable and Diverse Semantics in Text-to-Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14226/) (2026)
- [SemanticSlider3D: Training-Free Continuous Semantic Editing for 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18560/) (2026)
- [Measured Sliders: Learning Continuous Controls from Differentiable Image Measurements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.05234/) (2026)
- [Beyond the Linear Representation Hypothesis: Non-Linear Activation Steering in Text-to-Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06945/) (2026)
- [SliderEdit++: Improved Slider Trajectories in Instruction-Based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14253/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present SliderSpace, a framework for automatically decomposing the visual capabilities of diffusion models into controllable and human-understandable directions. Unlike existing control methods that require a user to specify attributes for each edit direction individually, SliderSpace discovers multiple interpretable and diverse directions simultaneously from a single text prompt. Each direction is trained as a low-rank adaptor, enabling compositional control and the discovery of surprising possibilities in the model's latent space. Through extensive experiments on state-of-the-art diffusion models, we demonstrate SliderSpace's effectiveness across three applications: concept decomposition, artistic style exploration, and diversity enhancement. Our quantitative evaluation shows that SliderSpace-discovered directions decompose the visual structure of model's knowledge effectively, offering insights into the latent capabilities encoded within diffusion models. User studies further validate that our method produces more diverse and useful variations compared to baselines. Our code, data and trained weights are available at https://sliderspace.baulab.info