# AI for Cultural Heritage Textiles: Fine-Tuned Latent Diffusion for Novel Ulos Motif Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.06590 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06590/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 14 of its 25 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12423/) (2021)
- [SinGAN: Learning a Generative Model from a Single Natural Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01164/) (2019)
- [Diffusion Models already have a Semantic Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10960/) (2022)
- [Image Data Augmentation for Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08610/) (2022)
- [StyleGAN2 Distillation for Feed-forward Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03581/) (2020)
- [Diffusion-4K: Ultra-High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18352/) (2025)
- [Smooth Diffusion: Crafting Smooth Latent Spaces in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04410/) (2023)
- [Synthesis of Batik Motifs using a Diffusion -- Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12122/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Preserving and revitalising traditional textiles such as Ulos, a cultural heritage of the Batak ethnic group in North Sumatra, Indonesia, requires balancing fidelity to tradition with innovative approaches that meet contemporary design demands. Traditional Ulos weaving faces two key limitations: a narrow range of motifs and a time-intensive design process. This study presents a generative AI framework that fine-tunes two pretrained latent diffusion models: Protogen v3.4 and Stable Diffusion v1.4, on a curated, annotated dataset of high-resolution Ulos motifs to generate culturally consistent yet novel designs. Model performance is evaluated quantitatively using Frechet Inception Distance (FID), Inception Score (IS), and qualitatively through assessments by traditional weavers and members of the public. Protogen v3.4 consistently outperforms Stable Diffusion v1.4, achieving substantially lower FID (~10.5x) and higher IS (2.0x), indicating superior visual fidelity, diversity, and closer alignment with the real Ulos motif distribution. We further examine the effects of strength and guidance scale on generation quality across both models. Lower strength values consistently yield higher fidelity (lower FID), while higher strength values increase generative diversity at the cost of realism, revealing a clear fidelity-diversity tradeoff for both models. Across all tested configurations, a guidance scale of 5-9 provides the most effective balance between fidelity and diversity, stabilising FID, KID, and IS, and is recommended as the operating range for high-quality, diverse Ulos motif generation. These findings demonstrate that carefully fine-tuned generative AI can support the creative renewal of intangible cultural heritage while preserving its stylistic and symbolic integrity.