# Memory-Efficient Personalization of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Selective Optimization Strategies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10029 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10029/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 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 17 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jul 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, 17 of 17)

- [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)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [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)
- [InstantBooth: Personalized Text-to-Image Generation without Test-Time Finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03411/) (2023)
- [Fine-Tuning Language Models with Just Forward Passes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17333/) (2023)
- [Perception Prioritized Training of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00227/) (2022)
- [Progressive Knowledge Distillation Of Stable Diffusion XL Using Layer Level Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02677/) (2024)
- [JeDi: Joint-Image Diffusion Models for Finetuning-Free Personalized Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06187/) (2024)
- [AvatarBooth: High-Quality and Customizable 3D Human Avatar Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09864/) (2023)
- [InstructBooth: Instruction-following Personalized Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03011/) (2023)
- [EmojiDiff: Advanced Facial Expression Control with High Identity Preservation in Portrait Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01254/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [SplitFlux: Learning to Decouple Content and Style from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15258/) (2025)
- [Memory-Efficient Fine-Tuning Diffusion Transformers via Dynamic Patch Sampling and Block Skipping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20755/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Memory-efficient personalization is critical for adapting text-to-image diffusion models while preserving user privacy and operating within the limited computational resources of edge devices. To this end, we propose a selective optimization framework that adaptively chooses between backpropagation on low-resolution images (BP-low) and zeroth-order optimization on high-resolution images (ZO-high), guided by the characteristics of the diffusion process. As observed in our experiments, BP-low efficiently adapts the model to target-specific features, but suffers from structural distortions due to resolution mismatch. Conversely, ZO-high refines high-resolution details with minimal memory overhead but faces slow convergence when applied without prior adaptation. By complementing both methods, our framework leverages BP-low for effective personalization while using ZO-high to maintain structural consistency, achieving memory-efficient and high-quality fine-tuning. To maximize the efficacy of both BP-low and ZO-high, we introduce a timestep-aware probabilistic function that dynamically selects the appropriate optimization strategy based on diffusion timesteps. This function mitigates the overfitting from BP-low at high timesteps, where structural information is critical, while ensuring ZO-high is applied more effectively as training progresses. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves competitive performance while significantly reducing memory consumption, enabling scalable, high-quality on-device personalization without increasing inference latency.
