Morphological Addressing of Identity Basins in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
Abstract
We demonstrate that morphological pressure creates navigable gradients at multiple levels of the text-to-image generative pipeline. In Study1, identity basins in Stable Diffusion 1.5 can be navigated using morphological descriptors -- constituent features like platinum blonde,'' beauty mark,'' and 1950s glamour'' -- without the target's name or photographs. A self-distillation loop (generating synthetic images from descriptor prompts, then training a LoRA on those outputs) achieves consistent convergence toward a specific identity as measured by ArcFace similarity. The trained LoRA creates a local coordinate system shaping not only the target identity but also its inverse: maximal away-conditioning produces eldritch'' structural breakdown in base SD1.5, while the LoRA-equipped model produces ``uncanny valley'' outputs -- coherent but precisely wrong. In Study2, we extend this to prompt-level morphology. Drawing on phonestheme theory, we generate 200 novel nonsense words from English sound-symbolic clusters (e.g., cr-, sn-, -oid, -ax) and find that phonestheme-bearing candidates produce significantly more visually coherent outputs than random controls (mean Purity@1 = 0.371 vs.\ 0.209, p<0.00001p < 0.00001 p<0.00001, Cohen's d=0.55d = 0.55 d=0.55). Three candidates -- snudgeoid, crashax, and broomix -- achieve perfect visual consistency (Purity@1 = 1.0) with zero training data contamination, each generating a distinct, coherent visual identity from phonesthetic structure alone. Together, these studies establish that morphological structure -- whether in feature descriptors or prompt-level phonological form -- creates systematic navigational gradients through diffusion model latent spaces. We document phase transitions in identity basins, CFG-invariant identity stability, and novel visual concepts emerging from sub-lexical sound patterns.
Figures & tables
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Base model | SD 1.5 |
| LoRA rank | 32 |
| Training epochs | 10 |
| Training software | Kohya_ss |
| Final training set size | 52 images |
| Refinement rounds | 4 |
| Round | Hit Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9/111 (8.1%) | High variance, competing attractors |
| 2 | 60% | Blonde anchor added |
| 3 | 70% | Self-reinforcing convergence |
| 4 | 53% | Binary behavior, basin ejection |
| Condition | Base Avg Sim | LoRA Avg Sim | Base Max Sim | LoRA Max Sim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arm A (Push) | 0.245 | 0.465 | 0.460 | 0.644 |
| Arm B (Pull) | 0.071 | 0.181 | 0.149 | 0.254 |
| Arm C (Push+Pull) | 0.287 | 0.331 | 0.412 | 0.603 |
| Onset | Semantic Association | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| cr- | Impact, breaking, rough texture | crash, crush, crumble, crisp |
| gl- | Light, vision, smooth surfaces | glow, gleam, glitter, gloss |
| sn- | Nasal/oral, sneaky, quick motion | snout, sniff, snap, sneak |
| sl- | Sliding, slippery, low/negative | slide, slime, sloth, sludge |
| gr- | Grasping, grinding, discomfort | grip, grind, groan, grit |
| thr- | Violent motion, penetration | throw, thrust, thrash, throttle |
| Suffix | Semantic Association | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| -oid | Resembling, robotic, biological | android, humanoid, asteroid |
| -ax | Tool, sharp, decisive | pickax, Ajax, thorax |
| -us | Latin biological/taxonomic | fungus, cactus, octopus |
| -um | Latin element/material | uranium, podium, museum |
| -or | Agent, doer | predator, terminator |
| -ix | Comic/magical, feminine-coded | Asterix, matrix, phoenix |
| Group | Mean Purity@1 | Std Dev | Median | Pass Threshold | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phonestheme | 200 | 0.3709 | 0.2997 | 0.3125 | 7 (3.5%) |
| Random pronounceable | 100 | 0.2087 | 0.2837 | 0.0625 | 2 (2.0%) |
| Positive control | 4 | 0.6719 | 0.3202 | 0.6875 | 1 (25.0%) |
| Negative control | 50 | 0.1412 | 0.2556 | 0.0000 | 1 (2.0%) |
| Comparison | -statistic | -value | Cohen’s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phonestheme vs. Random | 4.497 | 0.000010 | 0.551 (medium) |
| Phonestheme vs. Negative | 4.983 | 0.000001 | 0.788 (medium-large) |
| Random vs. Negative | 1.418 | 0.158 | — |
| Candidate | Type | Purity@1 | Contaminated? |
|---|---|---|---|
| drudgea | phonestheme | 1.0 | YES — Drudge Report |
| crashor | phonestheme | 1.0 | YES — literal “crash” + agentive -or |
| broomix | phonestheme | 1.0 | NO |
| crashax | phonestheme | 1.0 | NO |
| snudgeoid | phonestheme | 1.0 | NO |
| skogum | phonestheme | 1.0 | YES — Swedish “skog” = forest |
| Onset | Mean Purity@1 | |
|---|---|---|
| cr- | 0.473 | 21 |
| sk- | 0.409 | 20 |
| gr- | 0.410 | 18 |
| thr- | 0.404 | 24 |
| dr- | 0.384 | 20 |
| sn- | 0.352 | 16 |
| Suffix | Mean Purity@1 | |
|---|---|---|
| -ling | 0.452 | 13 |
| -us | 0.445 | 24 |
| -oid | 0.445 | 26 |
| -a | 0.398 | 25 |
| -or | 0.346 | 28 |
| -ax | 0.345 | 31 |
T2I Generation
Text-to-image generation creates images from natural-language prompts using generative models, with research focused on fidelity, control, efficiency, and safety.
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