Regressor-Guided Generative Image Editing Balances User Emotions to Reduce Time Spent Online

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gebhardt, Christoph, Willardt, Robin, Sadat, Seyedmorteza, Ning, Chih-Wei, Brombach, Andreas, Song, Jie, Hilliges, Otmar, Holz, Christian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gebhardt, Christoph
Willardt, Robin
Sadat, Seyedmorteza
Ning, Chih-Wei
Brombach, Andreas
Song, Jie
Hilliges, Otmar
Holz, Christian
author_facet Gebhardt, Christoph
Willardt, Robin
Sadat, Seyedmorteza
Ning, Chih-Wei
Brombach, Andreas
Song, Jie
Hilliges, Otmar
Holz, Christian
contents Internet overuse is a widespread phenomenon in today's digital society. Existing interventions, such as time limits or grayscaling, often rely on restrictive controls that provoke psychological reactance and are frequently circumvented. Building on prior work showing that emotional responses mediate the relationship between content consumption and online engagement, we investigate whether regulating the emotional impact of images can reduce online use in a non-coercive manner. We introduce and systematically analyze three regressor-guided image-editing approaches: (i) global optimization of emotion-related image attributes, (ii) optimization in a style latent space, and (iii) a diffusion-based method using classifier and classifier-free guidance. While the first two approaches modify low-level visual features (e.g., contrast, color), the diffusion-based method enables higher-level changes (e.g., adjusting clothing, facial features). Results from a controlled image-rating study and a social media experiment show that diffusion-based edits balance emotional responses and are associated with lower usage duration while preserving visual quality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_12289
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Regressor-Guided Generative Image Editing Balances User Emotions to Reduce Time Spent Online
Gebhardt, Christoph
Willardt, Robin
Sadat, Seyedmorteza
Ning, Chih-Wei
Brombach, Andreas
Song, Jie
Hilliges, Otmar
Holz, Christian
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Internet overuse is a widespread phenomenon in today's digital society. Existing interventions, such as time limits or grayscaling, often rely on restrictive controls that provoke psychological reactance and are frequently circumvented. Building on prior work showing that emotional responses mediate the relationship between content consumption and online engagement, we investigate whether regulating the emotional impact of images can reduce online use in a non-coercive manner. We introduce and systematically analyze three regressor-guided image-editing approaches: (i) global optimization of emotion-related image attributes, (ii) optimization in a style latent space, and (iii) a diffusion-based method using classifier and classifier-free guidance. While the first two approaches modify low-level visual features (e.g., contrast, color), the diffusion-based method enables higher-level changes (e.g., adjusting clothing, facial features). Results from a controlled image-rating study and a social media experiment show that diffusion-based edits balance emotional responses and are associated with lower usage duration while preserving visual quality.
title Regressor-Guided Generative Image Editing Balances User Emotions to Reduce Time Spent Online
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12289