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I am a postdoctoral fellow in UC Berkeley, working with Alyosha Efros.
Prior to that, I received my PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where I was advised by Michal Irani.
My research interests are Deep Learning and Computer Vision, especially Self-Supervision and Generative Models.
Together with Prof. Irani, I invented a framework called "Deep Internal Learning" that combines Deep Neural Networks with internal statistics.
I spent the summer of 2019 at Google Research where I worked on Generative Models.
My prizes and honors include the Rothshcild postdoctoral fellowship, the Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship, John F. Kennedy award for outstanding Ph.D. in the Weizmann Institute, and the Blavatnik award for CS Ph.D. graduates. Email / Google Scholar / GitHub / LinkedIn / Twitter |
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Assaf Shocher, Amil Dravid, Yossi Gandelsman, Inbar Mosseri, Michael Rubinstein, Alexei A. Efros. ICLR 2024 We propose a new approach for generative modeling based on training a neural network to be idempotent. An idempotent operator is one that can be applied sequentially without changing the result beyond the initial application, namely $f(f(z))=f(z)$. The proposed model $f$ is trained to map a source distribution (e.g, Gaussian noise) to a target distribution (e.g. realistic images) using the following objectives:
(1) Instances from the target distribution should map to themselves, namely $f(x)=x$. We define the target manifold as the set of all instances that $f$ maps to themselves.
(2) Instances that form the source distribution should map onto the defined target manifold. This is achieved by optimizing the idempotence term, $f(f(z))=f(z)$ which encourages the range of $f(z)$ to be on the target manifold. Under ideal assumptions such a process provably converges to the target distribution. This strategy results in a model capable of generating an output in one step, maintaining a consistent latent space, while also allowing sequential applications for refinement. Additionally, we find that by processing inputs from both target and source distributions, the model adeptly projects corrupted or modified data back to the target manifold. This work is a first step towards a ``global projector'' that enables projecting any input into a target data distribution.
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Hila Chefer, Oran Lang, Mor Geva, Volodymyr Polosukhin Assaf Shocher, Michal Irani, Inbar Mosseri, Lior Wolf, ICLR 2024 Text-to-image diffusion models have demonstrated an unparalleled ability to generate high-quality, diverse images from a textual prompt. However, the internal representations learned by these models remain an enigma. In this work, we present Conceptor, a novel method to interpret the internal representation of a textual concept by a diffusion model. This interpretation is obtained by decomposing the concept into a small set of human-interpretable textual elements. Applied over the state-of-the-art Stable Diffusion model, Conceptor reveals non-trivial structures in the representations of concepts. For example, we find surprising visual connections between concepts, that transcend their textual semantics. We additionally discover concepts that rely on mixtures of exemplars, biases, renowned artistic styles, or a simultaneous fusion of multiple meanings of the concept. Through a large battery of experiments, we demonstrate Conceptor's ability to provide meaningful, robust, and faithful decompositions for a wide variety of abstract, concrete, and complex textual concepts, while allowing to naturally connect each decomposition element to its corresponding visual impact on the generated images.
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Amil Dravid*, Yossi Gandelsman*, Alexei A. Efros, Assaf Shocher. ICCV 2023 Do different neural networks, trained for various vision tasks, share some common representations? In this paper, we demonstrate the existence of common features we call "Rosetta Neurons" across a range of models with different architectures, different tasks (generative and discriminative), and different types of supervision (class-supervised, text-supervised, self-supervised). We present an algorithm for mining a dictionary of Rosetta Neurons across several popular vision models: Class Supervised-ResNet50, DINO-ResNet50, DINO-ViT, MAE, CLIP-ResNet50, BigGAN, StyleGAN-2, StyleGAN-XL. Our findings suggest that certain visual concepts and structures are inherently embedded in the natural world and can be learned by different models regardless of the specific task or architecture, and without the use of semantic labels. We can visualize shared concepts directly due to generative models included in our analysis. The Rosetta Neurons facilitate model-to-model translation enabling various inversion-based manipulations, including cross-class alignments, shifting, zooming, and more, without the need for specialized training.
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Amir Bar, Florian Bordes, Assaf Shocher, Mahmoud Assran, Pascal Vincent, Nicolas Ballas, Trevor Darrell, Amir Globerson, Yann LeCun. Under Review Self-supervised learning is a promising paradigm in deep learning that enables learning from unlabeled data by constructing pretext tasks that require learning useful representations. In natural language processing, the dominant pretext task has been masked language modeling (MLM), while in computer vision there exists an equivalent called Masked Image Modeling (MIM). However, MIM is challenging because it requires predicting semantic content in accurate locations. E.g, given an incomplete picture of a dog, we can guess that there is a tail, but we cannot determine its exact location. In this work, we propose FlexPredict, a stochastic model that addresses this challenge by incorporating location uncertainty into the model. Specifically, we condition the model on stochastic masked token positions to guide the model toward learning features that are more robust to location uncertainties. Our approach improves downstream performance on a range of tasks, e.g, compared to MIM baselines, FlexPredict boosts ImageNet linear probing by 1.6% with ViT-B and by 2.5% for semisupervised video segmentation using ViT-L.
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Niv Haim*, Ben Finestein*, Niv Granot, Assaf Shocher, Shai Bagon, Tali Dekel, Michal Irani. ECCV 2022 GANs are able to perform generation and manipulation tasks, trained on a single video. However, these single video GANs require unreasonable amount of time to train on a single video, rendering them almost impractical. In this paper we question the necessity of a GAN for generation from a single video, and introduce a non-parametric baseline for a variety of generation and manipulation tasks. We revive classical space-time patches-nearest-neighbors approaches and adapt them to a scalable unconditional generative model, without any learning. This simple baseline surprisingly outperforms single-video GANs in visual quality and realism (confirmed by quantitative and qualitative evaluations), and is disproportionately faster (runtime reduced from several days to seconds). Other than diverse video generation, we demonstrate other applications using the same framework, including video analogies and spatio-temporal retargeting. Our proposed approach is easily scaled to Full-HD videos. These observations show that the classical approaches, if adapted correctly, significantly outperform heavy deep learning machinery for these tasks. This sets a new baseline for single-video generation and manipulation tasks, and no less important -- makes diverse generation from a single video practically possible for the first time.
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Niv Granot, Ben Finestein, Assaf Shocher, Shai Bagon, Michal Irani. CVPR 2022 Oral Single image generative models perform synthesis and manipulation tasks by capturing the distribution of patches within a single image. The classical (pre Deep Learning) prevailing approaches for these tasks are based on an optimization process that maximizes patch similarity between the input and generated output. Recently, however, Single Image GANs were introduced both as a superior solution for such manipulation tasks, but also for remarkable novel generative tasks. Despite their impressiveness, single image GANs require long training time (usually hours) for each image and each task. They often suffer from artifacts and are prone to optimization issues such as mode collapse. In this paper, we show that all of these tasks can be performed without any training, within several seconds, in a unified, surprisingly simple framework. We revisit and cast the "good-old" patch-based methods into a novel optimization-free framework. We start with an initial coarse guess, and then simply refine the details coarse-to-fine using patch-nearest-neighbor search. This allows generating random novel images better and much faster than GANs. We further demonstrate a wide range of applications, such as image editing and reshuffling, retargeting to different sizes, structural analogies, image collage and a newly introduced task of conditional inpainting. Not only is our method faster (×103-×104 than a GAN), it produces superior results (confirmed by quantitative and qualitative evaluation), less artifacts and more realistic global structure than any of the previous approaches (whether GAN-based or classical patch-based).
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Assaf Shocher*, Ben Finestein*, Niv Haim*, Michal Irani. arXiv 2020 A basic operation in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is spatial resizing of feature maps. This is done either by strided convolution (donwscaling) or transposed convolution (upscaling). Such operations are limited to a fixed filter moving at predetermined integer steps (strides). Spatial sizes of consecutive layers are related by integer scale factors, predetermined at architectural design, and remain fixed throughout training and inference time. We propose a generalization of the common Conv-layer, from a discrete layer to a Continuous Convolution (CC) Layer. CC Layers naturally extend Conv-layers by representing the filter as a learned continuous function over sub-pixel coordinates. This allows learnable and principled resizing of feature maps, to any size, dynamically and consistently across scales. Once trained, the CC layer can be used to output any scale/size chosen at inference time. The scale can be non-integer and differ between the axes. CC gives rise to new freedoms for architectural design, such as dynamic layer shapes at inference time, or gradual architectures where the size changes by a small factor at each layer. This gives rise to many desired CNN properties, new architectural design capabilities, and useful applications. We further show that current Conv-layers suffer from inherent misalignments, which are ameliorated by CC layers.
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Assaf Shocher*, Yossi Gandelsman*, Inbar Mosseri, Michal Yarom, Michal Irani, William T. Freeman, Tali Dekel. CVPR 2020 Oral We present a novel GAN-based model that utilizes the space of deep features learned by a pre-trained classification model. Inspired by classical image pyramid representations, we construct our model as a Semantic Generation Pyramid - a hierarchical framework which leverages the continuum of semantic information encapsulated in such deep features; this ranges from low level information contained in fine features to high level, semantic information contained in deeper features. More specifically, given a set of features extracted from a reference image, our model generates diverse image samples, each with matching features at each semantic level of the classification model. We demonstrate that our model results in a versatile and flexible framework that can be used in various classic and novel image generation tasks. These include: generating images with a controllable extent of semantic similarity to a reference image, and different manipulation tasks such as semantically-controlled inpainting and compositing; all achieved with the same model, with no further training.
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Sefi Bell-Kligler, Assaf Shocher, Michal Irani, NeurIPS 2019 Oral Super-resolution (SR) methods typically assume that the low-resolution (LR) image was downscaled from the unknown high-resolution (HR) image by a fixed 'ideal' downscaling kernel (e.g. Bicubic downscaling). However, this is rarely the case in real LR images, in contrast to synthetically generated SR datasets. When the assumed downscaling kernel deviates from the true one, the performance of SR methods significantly deteriorates. This gave rise to Blind-SR - namely, SR when the downscaling kernel ("SR-kernel") is unknown. It was further shown that the true SR-kernel is the one that maximizes the recurrence of patches across scales of the LR image. In this paper we show how this powerful cross-scale recurrence property can be realized using Deep Internal Learning. We introduce "KernelGAN", an image-specific Internal-GAN, which trains solely on the LR test image at test time, and learns its internal distribution of patches. Its Generator is trained to produce a downscaled version of the LR test image, such that its Discriminator cannot distinguish between the patch distribution of the downscaled image, and the patch distribution of the original LR image. The Generator, once trained, constitutes the downscaling operation with the correct image-specific SR-kernel. KernelGAN is fully unsupervised, requires no training data other than the input image itself, and leads to state-of-the-art results in Blind-SR when plugged into existing SR algorithms.
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Assaf Shocher, Shai Bagon, Phillip Isola, Michal Irani, ICCV 2019 Oral Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) typically learn a distribution of images in a large image dataset, and are then able to generate new images from this distribution. However, each natural image has its own internal statistics, captured by its unique distribution of patches. In this paper we propose an "Internal GAN" (InGAN) - an image-specific GAN - which trains on a single input image and learns its internal distribution of patches. It is then able to synthesize a plethora of new natural images of significantly different sizes, shapes and aspect-ratios - all with the same internal patch-distribution (same "DNA") as the input image. In particular, despite large changes in global size/shape of the image, all elements inside the image maintain their local size/shape. InGAN is fully unsupervised, requiring no additional data other than the input image itself. Once trained on the input image, it can remap the input to any size or shape in a single feedforward pass, while preserving the same internal patch distribution. InGAN provides a unified framework for a variety of tasks, bridging the gap between textures and natural images.
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Yossi Gandelsman, Assaf Shocher, Michal Irani, CVPR 2019 Oral Many seemingly unrelated computer vision tasks can be viewed as a special case of image decomposition into separate layers. For example, image segmentation (separation into foreground and background layers); transparent layer separation (into reflection and transmission layers); Image dehazing (separation into a clear image and a haze map), and more. In this paper we propose a unified framework for unsupervised layer decomposition of a single image, based on coupled "Deep-image-Prior" (DIP) networks. It was shown [Ulyanov et al] that the structure of a single DIP generator network is sufficient to capture the low-level statistics of a single image. We show that coupling multiple such DIPs provides a powerful tool for decomposing images into their basic components, for a wide variety of applications. This capability stems from the fact that the internal statistics of a mixture of layers is more complex than the statistics of each of its individual components. We show the power of this approach for Image-Dehazing, Fg/Bg Segmentation, Watermark-Removal, Transparency Separation in images and video, and more. These capabilities are achieved in a totally unsupervised way, with no training examples other than the input image/video itself.
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Assaf Shocher, Nadav Cohen, Michal Irani, CVPR 2018 Deep Learning has led to a dramatic leap in SuperResolution (SR) performance in the past few years. However, being supervised, these SR methods are restricted to specific training data, where the acquisition of the lowresolution (LR) images from their high-resolution (HR) counterparts is predetermined (e.g., bicubic downscaling), without any distracting artifacts (e.g., sensor noise, image compression, non-ideal PSF, etc). Real LR images, however, rarely obey these restrictions, resulting in poor SR results by SotA (State of the Art) methods. In this paper we introduce "Zero-Shot" SR, which exploits the power of Deep Learning, but does not rely on prior training. We exploit the internal recurrence of information inside a single image, and train a small image-specific CNN at test time, on examples extracted solely from the input image itself. As such, it can adapt itself to different settings per image. This allows to perform SR of real old photos, noisy images, biological data, and other images where the acquisition process is unknown or non-ideal. On such images, our method outperforms SotA CNN-based SR methods, as well as previous unsupervised SR methods. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first unsupervised CNN-based SR method.
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