Scene Graph Generation with Role-Playing Large Language Models

Current approaches for open-vocabulary scene graph generation (OVSGG) use vision-language models such as CLIP and follow a standard zero-shot pipeline -- computing similarity between the query image and the text embeddings for each category (i.e., text classifiers). In this work, we argue that the text classifiers adopted by existing OVSGG methods, i.e., category-/part-level prompts, are scene-agnostic as they remain unchanged across contexts. Using such fixed text classifiers not only struggles to model visual relations with high variance, but also falls short in adapting to distinct contexts. To plug these intrinsic shortcomings, we devise SDSGG, a scene-specific description based OVSGG framework where the weights of text classifiers are adaptively adjusted according to the visual content. In particular, to generate comprehensive and diverse descriptions oriented to the scene, an LLM is asked to play different roles (e.g., biologist and engineer) to analyze and discuss the descriptive features of a given scene from different views. Unlike previous efforts simply treating the generated descriptions as mutually equivalent text classifiers, SDSGG is equipped with an advanced renormalization mechanism to adjust the influence of each text classifier based on its relevance to the presented scene (this is what the term "specific" means). Furthermore, to capture the complicated interplay between subjects and objects, we propose a new lightweight module called mutual visual adapter. It refines CLIP's ability to recognize relations by learning an interaction-aware semantic space. Extensive experiments on prevalent benchmarks show that SDSGG outperforms top-leading methods by a clear margin.

SPFresh: Incremental In-Place Update for Billion-Scale Vector Search

Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search (ANNS) is now widely used in various applications, ranging from information retrieval, question answering, and recommendation, to search for similar high-dimensional vectors. As the amount of vector data grows continuously, it becomes important to support updates to vector index, the enabling technique that allows for efficient and accurate ANNS on vectors. Because of the curse of high dimensionality, it is often costly to identify the right neighbors of a single new vector, a necessary process for index update. To amortize update costs, existing systems maintain a secondary index to accumulate updates, which are merged by the main index by global rebuilding the entire index periodically. However, this approach has high fluctuations of search latency and accuracy, not even to mention that it requires substantial resources and is extremely time-consuming for rebuilds. We introduce SPFresh, a system that supports in-place vector updates. At the heart of SPFresh is LIRE, a lightweight incremental rebalancing protocol to split vector partitions and reassign vectors in the nearby partitions to adapt to data distribution shift. LIRE achieves low-overhead vector updates by only reassigning vectors at the boundary between partitions, where in a high-quality vector index the amount of such vectors are deemed small. With LIRE, SPFresh provides superior query latency and accuracy to solutions based on global rebuild, with only 1% of DRAM and less than 10% cores needed at the peak compared to the state-of-the-art, in a billion scale vector index with 1% of daily vector update rate.

Reblurring-Guided Single Image Defocus Deblurring: A Learning Framework with Misaligned Training Pairs

For single image defocus deblurring, acquiring well-aligned training pairs (or training triplets), i.e., a defocus blurry image, an all-in-focus sharp image (and a defocus blur map), is an intricate task for the development of deblurring models. Existing image defocus deblurring methods typically rely on training data collected by specialized imaging equipment, presupposing that these pairs or triplets are perfectly aligned. However, in practical scenarios involving the collection of real-world data, direct acquisition of training triplets is infeasible, and training pairs inevitably encounter spatial misalignment issues. In this work, we introduce a reblurring-guided learning framework for single image defocus deblurring, enabling the learning of a deblurring network even with misaligned training pairs. Specifically, we first propose a baseline defocus deblurring network that utilizes spatially varying defocus blur map as degradation prior to enhance the deblurring performance. Then, to effectively learn the baseline defocus deblurring network with misaligned training pairs, our reblurring module ensures spatial consistency between the deblurred image, the reblurred image and the input blurry image by reconstructing spatially variant isotropic blur kernels. Moreover, the spatially variant blur derived from the reblurring module can serve as pseudo supervision for defocus blur map during training, interestingly transforming training pairs into training triplets. Additionally, we have collected a new dataset specifically for single image defocus deblurring (SDD) with typical misalignments, which not only substantiates our proposed method but also serves as a benchmark for future research.

Progressive Residual Extraction based Pre-training for Speech Representation Learning

Self-supervised learning (SSL) has garnered significant attention in speech processing, excelling in linguistic tasks such as speech recognition. However, jointly improving the performance of pre-trained models on various downstream tasks, each requiring different speech information, poses significant challenges. To this purpose, we propose a progressive residual extraction based self-supervised learning method, named ProgRE. Specifically, we introduce two lightweight and specialized task modules into an encoder-style SSL backbone to enhance its ability to extract pitch variation and speaker information from speech. Furthermore, to prevent the interference of reinforced pitch variation and speaker information with irrelevant content information learning, we residually remove the information extracted by these two modules from the main branch. The main branch is then trained using HuBERT's speech masking prediction to ensure the performance of the Transformer's deep-layer features on content tasks. In this way, we can progressively extract pitch variation, speaker, and content representations from the input speech. Finally, we can combine multiple representations with diverse speech information using different layer weights to obtain task-specific representations for various downstream tasks. Experimental results indicate that our proposed method achieves joint performance improvements on various tasks, such as speaker identification, speech recognition, emotion recognition, speech enhancement, and voice conversion, compared to excellent SSL methods such as wav2vec2.0, HuBERT, and WavLM.

Cost-Effective Online Multi-LLM Selection with Versatile Reward Models

With the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), the diversity of multi-LLM tasks and the variability in their pricing structures have become increasingly important, as costs can vary greatly between different LLMs. To tackle these challenges, we introduce the \textit{C2MAB-V}, a \underline{C}ost-effective \underline{C}ombinatorial \underline{M}ulti-armed \underline{B}andit with \underline{V}ersatile reward models for optimal LLM selection and usage. This online model differs from traditional static approaches or those reliant on a single LLM without cost consideration. With multiple LLMs deployed on a scheduling cloud and a local server dedicated to handling user queries, \textit{C2MAB-V} facilitates the selection of multiple LLMs over a combinatorial search space, specifically tailored for various collaborative task types with different reward models. Based on our designed online feedback mechanism and confidence bound technique, \textit{C2MAB-V} can effectively address the multi-LLM selection challenge by managing the exploration-exploitation trade-off across different models, while also balancing cost and reward for diverse tasks. The NP-hard integer linear programming problem for selecting multiple LLMs with trade-off dilemmas is addressed by: i) decomposing the integer problem into a relaxed form by the local server, ii) utilizing a discretization rounding scheme that provides optimal LLM combinations by the scheduling cloud, and iii) continual online updates based on feedback. Theoretically, we prove that \textit{C2MAB-V} offers strict guarantees over versatile reward models, matching state-of-the-art results for regret and violations in some degenerate cases. Empirically, we show that \textit{C2MAB-V} effectively balances performance and cost-efficiency with nine LLMs for three application scenarios.

Are You Copying My Prompt? Protecting the Copyright of Vision Prompt for VPaaS via Watermark

Visual Prompt Learning (VPL) differs from traditional fine-tuning methods in reducing significant resource consumption by avoiding updating pre-trained model parameters. Instead, it focuses on learning an input perturbation, a visual prompt, added to downstream task data for making predictions. Since learning generalizable prompts requires expert design and creation, which is technically demanding and time-consuming in the optimization process, developers of Visual Prompts as a Service (VPaaS) have emerged. These developers profit by providing well-crafted prompts to authorized customers. However, a significant drawback is that prompts can be easily copied and redistributed, threatening the intellectual property of VPaaS developers. Hence, there is an urgent need for technology to protect the rights of VPaaS developers. To this end, we present a method named \textbf{WVPrompt} that employs visual prompt watermarking in a black-box way. WVPrompt consists of two parts: prompt watermarking and prompt verification. Specifically, it utilizes a poison-only backdoor attack method to embed a watermark into the prompt and then employs a hypothesis-testing approach for remote verification of prompt ownership. Extensive experiments have been conducted on three well-known benchmark datasets using three popular pre-trained models: RN50, BIT-M, and Instagram. The experimental results demonstrate that WVPrompt is efficient, harmless, and robust to various adversarial operations.

ParamReL: Learning Parameter Space Representation via Progressively Encoding Bayesian Flow Networks

The recently proposed Bayesian Flow Networks~(BFNs) show great potential in modeling parameter spaces, offering a unified strategy for handling continuous, discretized, and discrete data. However, BFNs cannot learn high-level semantic representation from the parameter space since {common encoders, which encode data into one static representation, cannot capture semantic changes in parameters.} This motivates a new direction: learning semantic representations hidden in the parameter spaces to characterize mixed-typed noisy data. {Accordingly, we propose a representation learning framework named ParamReL, which operates in the parameter space to obtain parameter-wise latent semantics that exhibit progressive structures. Specifically, ParamReL proposes a \emph{self-}encoder to learn latent semantics directly from parameters, rather than from observations. The encoder is then integrated into BFNs, enabling representation learning with various formats of observations. Mutual information terms further promote the disentanglement of latent semantics and capture meaningful semantics simultaneously.} We illustrate {conditional generation and reconstruction} in ParamReL via expanding BFNs, and extensive {quantitative} experimental results demonstrate the {superior effectiveness} of ParamReL in learning parameter representation.

Incremental Learning with Concept Drift Detection and Prototype-based Embeddings for Graph Stream Classification

Data stream mining aims at extracting meaningful knowledge from continually evolving data streams, addressing the challenges posed by nonstationary environments, particularly, concept drift which refers to a change in the underlying data distribution over time. Graph structures offer a powerful modelling tool to represent complex systems, such as, critical infrastructure systems and social networks. Learning from graph streams becomes a necessity to understand the dynamics of graph structures and to facilitate informed decision-making. This work introduces a novel method for graph stream classification which operates under the general setting where a data generating process produces graphs with varying nodes and edges over time. The method uses incremental learning for continual model adaptation, selecting representative graphs (prototypes) for each class, and creating graph embeddings. Additionally, it incorporates a loss-based concept drift detection mechanism to recalculate graph prototypes when drift is detected.

CATP: Cross-Attention Token Pruning for Accuracy Preserved Multimodal Model Inference

In response to the rising interest in large multimodal models, we introduce Cross-Attention Token Pruning (CATP), a precision-focused token pruning method. Our approach leverages cross-attention layers in multimodal models, exemplified by BLIP-2, to extract valuable information for token importance determination. CATP employs a refined voting strategy across model heads and layers. In evaluations, CATP achieves up to 12.1X higher accuracy compared to existing token pruning methods, addressing the trade-off between computational efficiency and model precision.

Open-Vocabulary Scene Text Recognition via Pseudo-Image Labeling and Margin Loss

Scene text recognition is an important and challenging task in computer vision. However, most prior works focus on recognizing pre-defined words, while there are various out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words in real-world applications. In this paper, we propose a novel open-vocabulary text recognition framework, Pseudo-OCR, to recognize OOV words. The key challenge in this task is the lack of OOV training data. To solve this problem, we first propose a pseudo label generation module that leverages character detection and image inpainting to produce substantial pseudo OOV training data from real-world images. Unlike previous synthetic data, our pseudo OOV data contains real characters and backgrounds to simulate real-world applications. Secondly, to reduce noises in pseudo data, we present a semantic checking mechanism to filter semantically meaningful data. Thirdly, we introduce a quality-aware margin loss to boost the training with pseudo data. Our loss includes a margin-based part to enhance the classification ability, and a quality-aware part to penalize low-quality samples in both real and pseudo data. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art on eight datasets and achieves the first rank in the ICDAR2022 challenge.