Latent space based steganographic image generation

A system comprising:

• a memory component;
• and
• a processing device coupled to the memory component, the processing device to perform operations comprising:
• receiving a steganographic image that includes a secret that includes a bit string representing one or more characters, the steganographic image generated by incorporating an embedding of the secret within latent code used to render the steganographic image;
• extracting the secret from the steganographic image using a secret decoder, the secret decoder trained to withstand image perturbations using a noise model;
• and
• outputting the one or more characters included in the secret in a user interface of the processing device.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable instructions, which when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform operations comprising:

• receiving a secret that includes a bit string representing one or more characters and latent code generated by a latent diffusion model;
• generating, by a secret encoder of the processing device, an embedding of the secret to act as a latent offset to the latent code;
• combining the embedding of the secret with the latent code generated by the latent diffusion model;
• and
• outputting a steganographic image generated by a decoder of a convolutional neural network based on the combination of the embedding of the secret and the latent code, the secret visually imperceptibly hidden within the steganographic image.