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arXiv · 2208.00005

Testing Relational Understanding in Text-Guided Image Generation

Colin Conwell·Tomer Ullman
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Abstract

Relations are basic building blocks of human cognition. Classic and recent work suggests that many relations are early developing, and quickly perceived. Machine models that aspire to human-level perception and reasoning should reflect the ability to recognize and reason generatively about relations. We report a systematic empirical examination of a recent text-guided image generation model (DALL-E 2), using a set of 15 basic physical and social relations studied or proposed in the literature, and judgements from human participants (N = 169). Overall, we find that only ~22% of images matched basic relation prompts. Based on a quantitative examination of people's judgments, we suggest that current image generation models do not yet have a grasp of even basic relations involving simple objects and agents. We examine reasons for model successes and failures, and suggest possible improvements based on computations observed in biological intelligence.

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Colin Conwell, Tomer Ullman. 2022-07-29. Testing Relational Understanding in Text-Guided Image Generation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00005

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