Semantic Knowledge Distillation for Mobile Image Translation GANs

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Solution Overview

Problem

State-of-the-art GAN models are too large and slow for deployment on resource-limited devices like smartphones, and existing compression methods fail to preserve image fidelity and performance.

Innovation Solution

Implement a student GAN model with knowledge distillation from a teacher model, using a semantic relation loss to transfer semantic knowledge from intermediate layers, enabling efficient deployment on mobile devices.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Manufacturing precision

If state-of-the-art GAN models are used for image-to-image translation, then image fidelity and translation quality are improved, but model size and computation requirements increase making deployment on mobile devices infeasible

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveimage fidelityVSAvoidmodel size
Core Design Contradiction:
Manufacturing precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent creates a student model that copies the essential functionality and semantic relationships from a teacher model through knowledge distillation. The student model replicates the teacher's behavior on translation tasks while being significantly smaller in size, enabling mobile deployment without requiring the full complexity of the original high-fidelity model

Inventive Principle:
Principle #26Copying

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces an intermediary knowledge distillation process that transfers semantic relationships from the teacher model to the student model. This intermediary mechanism allows the student model to learn condensed representations of image semantics without directly copying the teacher's large parameter structure, achieving a balance between fidelity and size

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Manufacturing precision

If state-of-the-art GAN models are used for image-to-image translation, then translation quality is improved, but inference time increases making real-time processing impossible

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvetranslation qualityVSAvoidinference speed
Core Design Contradiction:
Manufacturing precisionVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The student model copies the translation capability from the teacher model through knowledge distillation, achieving comparable translation quality with significantly reduced computation. This allows real-time processing on mobile devices while maintaining the essential translation functionality of the larger teacher model

Inventive Principle:
Principle #26Copying

Solution Approach 2:

The patent changes the parameters of the model by creating a smaller student version through knowledge distillation. The student model has fewer parameters and simplified architecture compared to the teacher model, directly improving inference speed while preserving translation quality through learned semantic relationships

Inventive Principle:
Principle #35Parameter changes

3Device complexity

If existing compression methods are applied to GAN models, then model size is reduced, but image fidelity and performance are lost

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvemodel sizeVSAvoidimage fidelity
Core Design Contradiction:
Device complexityVSManufacturing precision

Solution Approach 1:

The knowledge distillation process acts as an intermediary that transfers semantic knowledge from the teacher model to the student model. This ensures that even though the student model is compressed in size, it retains the essential semantic relationships and translation capabilities of the original teacher model, preventing fidelity loss

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent extracts the essential semantic relationships and translation knowledge from the teacher model through knowledge distillation. By extracting only the critical semantic information needed for translation rather than compressing the entire model structure, the student model maintains high fidelity with significantly reduced size

Inventive Principle:
Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Data Source

PatentEP4150528B1Semantic relation preserving knowledge distillation for image-to-image translation
Publication Date: 2026.04.08 LOREAL SA
  • EP4150528B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP4150528B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP4150528B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

GANs based generators are useful to perform image to image translations. GANs models have large storage sizes and resource use requirements such that they are too large to be deployed directly on mobile devices. Systems and methods define through conditioning a student GANs model having a student generator that is scaled downwardly from a teacher GANs model (and generator) using knowledge distillation. A semantic relation knowledge distillation loss is used to transfer semantic knowledge from an intermediate layer of the teacher to an intermediate layer of the student. Student generators thus defined are stored and executed by mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops to provide augmented reality experiences. Effects are simulated on images, including makeup, hair, nail and age simulation effects.