Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generation

Counterfactual image generation is pivotal for understanding the causal relations of variables, with applications in interpretability and generation of unbiased synthetic data. However, evaluating image generation is a long-standing challenge in itself. The need to evaluate counterfactual generation compounds on this challenge, precisely because counterfactuals, by definition, are hypothetical scenarios without observable ground truths. In this paper, we present a novel comprehensive framework aimed at benchmarking counterfactual image generation methods. We incorporate metrics that focus on evaluating diverse aspects of counterfactuals, such as composition, effectiveness, minimality of interventions, and image realism. We assess the performance of three distinct conditional image generation model types, based on the Structural Causal Model paradigm. Our work is accompanied by a user-friendly Python package which allows to further evaluate and benchmark existing and future counterfactual image generation methods. Our framework is extendable to additional SCM and other causal methods, generative models, and datasets.