arXiv:2608.23593cs.CVcs.AI2026-08

检测图像审美评分器是否把肤色差异误判为质量差异。

Fidelity Preference, Not Demographic Preference: A Pixel-Level Attribute-Sensitivity Audit of Image Aesthetic/Preference Scorers

  • 用像素级操作测试肤色和体型对评分的影响,分离真实偏好与保真度影响。
  • 多数评分器在肤色变暗或变亮时均降低分数,主因是保真度下降而非种族偏好。
  • 仅在真实图像上验证才能区分真实偏见与保真度效应,合成数据易误导结论。

文本到图像系统使用学习到的审美评分器过滤训练数据并指导生成,但这些评分是否将人口统计属性(如肤色)误当作客观质量尚不明确。我们对四个评分器(LAION-Aesthetics、PickScore、ImageReward、HPSv2)进行了像素级干预审计,分别在合成与真实图像中改变肤色明度与体型特征。关键发现:在肤色明度变化上,主导效应是保真度偏好——原始图像得分最高,向任意方向扰动均被惩罚(呈倒U型)。对照组显示该惩罚并非皮肤操作本身导致,因为对非皮肤区域施加相同CIELAB L*变化也产生相似惩罚幅度。然而,惩罚效应依赖操作方式,仅在LAION-Aesthetics中所有操作均成立。值得注意的是,仅基于合成图像的审计具有误导性:在合成人脸中LAION-Aesthetics表现出对深肤色的偏好,但在1470张真实人脸中偏好反转且显著减弱,放大效应也不再显著。不同评分器间合成结果不可迁移——LAION-Aesthetics与HPSv2偏好反转,PickScore则弱化。我们贡献了一个可复现的基准,包含抗伪影控制和合成/真实交叉验证,并提出像素级因果隔离的有效性标准(适用于肤色,不适用于体型因形变干扰)。分人群分析显示,经过FDR校正后,保真度惩罚不对称性在多数群体中不稳健,仅HPSv2保持稳定。研究表明,简单依赖合成数据会错误判断偏见的方向与程度;只有在真实数据中进行跨图像因果隔离,才能准确识别真正的代际偏见。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Text-to-image systems use learned aesthetic scorers to filter training data and guide generation, but whether these scores encode demographic attributes as objective quality is unclear. We audit four scorers (LAION-Aesthetics, PickScore, ImageReward, HPSv2) using pixel-level interventions on skin tone and body type in synthetic and real images. Our key finding is that along skin-lightness, the dominant effect is fidelity preference: unaltered images score highest, and perturbations in either direction are penalized (inverted-U). Placebo arms show this penalty is not an artifact of the skin operator, as applying the same CIELAB L* shift to non-skin regions yields similar penalty magnitudes. However, the penalty is operator-dependent and holds for all operators only for LAION-Aes. Critically, audits on synthetic images alone are misleading: LAION-Aes shows strong preference for darker skin on synthetic faces, but on 1470 real faces the preference reverses and becomes much smaller, and amplification becomes non-significant. Across scorers, synthetic results do not transfer -- reversing for LAION-Aes and HPSv2, attenuating for PickScore. We contribute a reproducible benchmark with artifact control and synthetic/real cross-validation, and an auditability criterion for pixel-level causal isolation (valid for skin tone, not for body type due to deformation). Population-stratified analysis shows fidelity-penalty asymmetry is not robust across groups after FDR correction except for HPSv2. Our findings show naive synthetic audits misjudge bias direction and magnitude, and only within-image causal isolation on real data can distinguish true demographic bias from fidelity preference.

图像生成审美评分偏见审计真实性验证

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