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Are GANs Created Equal? A Large-Scale Study (arxiv.org)
3 points by kkurach on Nov 29, 2017 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Scientists ran a fair, large-scale comparison of many fake-image generators, giving each the same heavy tuning and repeated tries. Most reached similar quality scores, and none consistently beat the original 2014 version, suggesting gains come from more computing and tuning, not better algorithms.

Abstract

Generative adversarial networks (GAN) are a powerful subclass of generative models. Despite a very rich research activity leading to numerous interesting GAN algorithms, it is still very hard to assess which algorithm(s) perform better than others. We conduct a neutral, multi-faceted large-scale empirical study on state-of-the art models and evaluation measures. We find that most models can reach similar scores with enough hyperparameter optimization and random restarts. This suggests that improvements can arise from a higher computational budget and tuning more than fundamental algorithmic changes. To overcome some limitations of the current metrics, we also propose several data sets on which precision and recall can be computed. Our experimental results suggest that future GAN research should be based on more systematic and objective evaluation procedures. Finally, we did not find evidence that any of the tested algorithms consistently outperforms the non-saturating GAN introduced in \cite{goodfellow2014generative}.

Mario Lucic, Karol Kurach, Marcin Michalski, Sylvain Gelly, Olivier Bousquet
arXiv:1711.10337 · stat.ML, cs.LG · submitted Nov 28, 2017 · updated Oct 29, 2018
abstract · pdf · html · NIPS'18: Added a section on the limitations of the study and additional empirical results

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Also discussed: Jul 2019 (2 points, 0 comments)