Unsupervised visual attribute transfer through reconfigurable image translation

A system for learning an attribute transfer that conveys at least one attribute value of a reference image to a source image, the system comprising:

• an encoder configured to encode an original source image to generate a plurality of attribute values that specify the original source image, and to encode an original reference image to generate a plurality of attribute values that specify the original reference image;
• a converter configured to replace at least one attribute value of a target attribute of the attribute values of the original source image with at least one corresponding attribute value of the original reference image, to obtain a plurality of attribute values that specify a target image of interest;
• and
• a generator configured to generate a target image based on the attribute values of the target image of interest,
• wherein during training the system,
• the encoder encodes the generated target image to generate a plurality of attribute values that specify the generated target image,
• the converter replaces at least one attribute value corresponding to the target attribute among the attribute values of the generated target image with at least one attribute value corresponding to the target attribute of the original source image, to generate a plurality of attribute values for a source image reconstruction,
• the generator generates a reconstructed source image based on the attribute values of the source image reconstruction,
• the converter replaces at least one attribute value corresponding to the target attribute among the attribute values of the original reference image with at least one attribute value corresponding to the target attribute of the target image, to generate a plurality of attribute values for a reference image reconstruction, and
• the generator generates a reconstructed reference image based on the attribute values for the reference image reconstruction,
• wherein, during training the system, parameters of the encoder and the generator are updated by using,
• a reconstruction loss that represents a difference between the reconstructed source image and the original source image,
• a reconstruction loss that represents a difference between the reconstructed reference image and the original reference image, and
• a generative adversarial loss of the generated target image.