Towards Fair and Robust Face Parsing for Generative AI: A Multi-Objective Approach

Face parsing is a fundamental task in computer vision, enabling applications such as identity verification, facial editing, and controllable image synthesis. However, existing face parsing models often lack fairness and robustness, leading to biased segmentation across demographic groups and errors under occlusions, noise, and domain shifts. These limitations affect downstream face synthesis, where segmentation biases can degrade generative model outputs. We propose a multi-objective learning framework that optimizes accuracy, fairness, and robustness in face parsing. Our approach introduces a homotopy-based loss function that dynamically adjusts the importance of these objectives during training. To evaluate its impact, we compare multi-objective and single-objective U-Net models in a GAN-based face synthesis pipeline (Pix2PixHD). Our results show that fairness-aware and robust segmentation improves photorealism and consistency in face generation. Additionally, we conduct preliminary experiments using ControlNet, a structured conditioning model for diffusion-based synthesis, to explore how segmentation quality influences guided image generation. Our findings demonstrate that multi-objective face parsing improves demographic consistency and robustness, leading to higher-quality GAN-based synthesis.<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup><sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup>Source code and trained model weights are available on GitHub: https://github.com/sabraha2/Towards-Fair-and-Robust-Face-Parsing-for-Generative-AI-A-Multi-Objective-Approach.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-05-26
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/fg61629.2025.11099138
Primary Topic
Face recognition and analysis
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Towards Fair and Robust Face Parsing for Generative AI: A Multi-Objective Approach

Jonathan D. Hauenstein, Sophia J. Abraham, Walter J. Scheirer
Face recognition and analysis
article

Towards Fair and Robust Face Parsing for Generative AI: A Multi-Objective Approach

Jonathan D. Hauenstein, Sophia J. Abraham, Walter J. Scheirer
article en

Abstract

Face parsing is a fundamental task in computer vision, enabling applications such as identity verification, facial editing, and controllable image synthesis. However, existing face parsing models often lack fairness and robustness, leading to biased segmentation across demographic groups and errors under occlusions, noise, and domain shifts. These limitations affect downstream face synthesis, where segmentation biases can degrade generative model outputs. We propose a multi-objective learning framework that optimizes accuracy, fairness, and robustness in face parsing. Our approach introduces a homotopy-based loss function that dynamically adjusts the importance of these objectives during training. To evaluate its impact, we compare multi-objective and single-objective U-Net models in a GAN-based face synthesis pipeline (Pix2PixHD). Our results show that fairness-aware and robust segmentation improves photorealism and consistency in face generation. Additionally, we conduct preliminary experiments using ControlNet, a structured conditioning model for diffusion-based synthesis, to explore how segmentation quality influences guided image generation. Our findings demonstrate that multi-objective face parsing improves demographic consistency and robustness, leading to higher-quality GAN-based synthesis.<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup><sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup>Source code and trained model weights are available on GitHub: https://github.com/sabraha2/Towards-Fair-and-Robust-Face-Parsing-for-Generative-AI-A-Multi-Objective-Approach.

University of Notre Dame (US)
Arm
Openalex Percentile: Top 82%
Face recognition and analysis
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