# Morphological Addressing of Identity Basins in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18533 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18533/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 9 of its 15 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Feb 2026.

## 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, 9 of 9)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13188/) (2023)
- [Attend-and-Excite: Attention-Based Semantic Guidance for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13826/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Art or Digital Forgery? Investigating Data Replication in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03860/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models already have a Semantic Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10960/) (2022)
- [Concept Sliders: LoRA Adaptors for Precise Control in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12092/) (2023)
- [DALLE-2 is Seeing Double: Flaws in Word-to-Concept Mapping in Text2Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10606/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We demonstrate that morphological pressure creates navigable gradients at multiple levels of the text-to-image generative pipeline. In Study~1, identity basins in Stable Diffusion 1.5 can be navigated using morphological descriptors -- constituent features like platinum blonde,'' beauty mark,'' and 1950s glamour'' -- without the target's name or photographs. A self-distillation loop (generating synthetic images from descriptor prompts, then training a LoRA on those outputs) achieves consistent convergence toward a specific identity as measured by ArcFace similarity. The trained LoRA creates a local coordinate system shaping not only the target identity but also its inverse: maximal away-conditioning produces eldritch'' structural breakdown in base SD1.5, while the LoRA-equipped model produces ``uncanny valley'' outputs -- coherent but precisely wrong. In Study~2, we extend this to prompt-level morphology. Drawing on phonestheme theory, we generate 200 novel nonsense words from English sound-symbolic clusters (e.g., cr-, sn-, -oid, -ax) and find that phonestheme-bearing candidates produce significantly more visually coherent outputs than random controls (mean Purity@1 = 0.371 vs. 0.209, p<0.00001p < 0.00001 p<0.00001, Cohen's d=0.55d = 0.55 d=0.55). Three candidates -- snudgeoid, crashax, and broomix -- achieve perfect visual consistency (Purity@1 = 1.0) with zero training data contamination, each generating a distinct, coherent visual identity from phonesthetic structure alone. Together, these studies establish that morphological structure -- whether in feature descriptors or prompt-level phonological form -- creates systematic navigational gradients through diffusion model latent spaces. We document phase transitions in identity basins, CFG-invariant identity stability, and novel visual concepts emerging from sub-lexical sound patterns.