# ProDG: Prototypes for Data-Free Generative Post-Hoc Explainability

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08858 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08858/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [This Looks Like That: Deep Learning for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10574/) (2018)
- [Neural Prototype Trees for Interpretable Fine-grained Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02046/) (2020)
- [Interpretable Image Classification with Differentiable Prototypes Assignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02902/) (2021)
- [ProtoPShare: Prototype Sharing for Interpretable Image Classification and Similarity Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14340/) (2020)
- [InfoDisent: Explainability of Image Classification Models by Information Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10329/) (2024)
- [EPIC: Explanation of Pretrained Image Classification Networks via Prototype](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12897/) (2025)
- [SIDE: Sparse Information Disentanglement for Explainable Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19321/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ante-hoc interpretability methods based on prototypes provide highly accurate explanations by utilizing the intuitive "this looks like that" reasoning paradigm. On the other hand, post-hoc models can explain predictions for a single image without relying on an underlying dataset or requiring costly neural network retraining. Recent approaches successfully solve the retraining problem for prototype-based networks. However, they still face a fundamental limitation: they require access to a subset of data (e.g., a test or validation set) to search for and extract the visual prototypes. In this paper, we address this issue and introduce ProDG: Generative Prototypes for Data-Free Post-Hoc Explainability, a novel framework that leverages generative models to synthesize pure, high-fidelity prototypes directly from the frozen model's weights, completely eliminating the dependency on any external data. By establishing this new frontier in Data-Free XAI, ProDG unlocks robust visual interpretability for privacy-sensitive domains, where original data is strictly restricted or fundamentally inaccessible. Project page: https://github.com/piotr310100/ProDG