FedDifRC: Unlocking the Potential of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models in Heterogeneous Federated Learning

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Main Authors: Wang, Huan, Li, Haoran, Chen, Huaming, Yan, Jun, Shi, Jiahua, Shen, Jun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Huan
Li, Haoran
Chen, Huaming
Yan, Jun
Shi, Jiahua
Shen, Jun
author_facet Wang, Huan
Li, Haoran
Chen, Huaming
Yan, Jun
Shi, Jiahua
Shen, Jun
contents Federated learning aims at training models collaboratively across participants while protecting privacy. However, one major challenge for this paradigm is the data heterogeneity issue, where biased data preferences across multiple clients, harming the model's convergence and performance. In this paper, we first introduce powerful diffusion models into the federated learning paradigm and show that diffusion representations are effective steers during federated training. To explore the possibility of using diffusion representations in handling data heterogeneity, we propose a novel diffusion-inspired Federated paradigm with Diffusion Representation Collaboration, termed FedDifRC, leveraging meaningful guidance of diffusion models to mitigate data heterogeneity. The key idea is to construct text-driven diffusion contrasting and noise-driven diffusion regularization, aiming to provide abundant class-related semantic information and consistent convergence signals. On the one hand, we exploit the conditional feedback from the diffusion model for different text prompts to build a text-driven contrastive learning strategy. On the other hand, we introduce a noise-driven consistency regularization to align local instances with diffusion denoising representations, constraining the optimization region in the feature space. In addition, FedDifRC can be extended to a self-supervised scheme without relying on any labeled data. We also provide a theoretical analysis for FedDifRC to ensure convergence under non-convex objectives. The experiments on different scenarios validate the effectiveness of FedDifRC and the efficiency of crucial components.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_06482
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FedDifRC: Unlocking the Potential of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models in Heterogeneous Federated Learning
Wang, Huan
Li, Haoran
Chen, Huaming
Yan, Jun
Shi, Jiahua
Shen, Jun
Machine Learning
Federated learning aims at training models collaboratively across participants while protecting privacy. However, one major challenge for this paradigm is the data heterogeneity issue, where biased data preferences across multiple clients, harming the model's convergence and performance. In this paper, we first introduce powerful diffusion models into the federated learning paradigm and show that diffusion representations are effective steers during federated training. To explore the possibility of using diffusion representations in handling data heterogeneity, we propose a novel diffusion-inspired Federated paradigm with Diffusion Representation Collaboration, termed FedDifRC, leveraging meaningful guidance of diffusion models to mitigate data heterogeneity. The key idea is to construct text-driven diffusion contrasting and noise-driven diffusion regularization, aiming to provide abundant class-related semantic information and consistent convergence signals. On the one hand, we exploit the conditional feedback from the diffusion model for different text prompts to build a text-driven contrastive learning strategy. On the other hand, we introduce a noise-driven consistency regularization to align local instances with diffusion denoising representations, constraining the optimization region in the feature space. In addition, FedDifRC can be extended to a self-supervised scheme without relying on any labeled data. We also provide a theoretical analysis for FedDifRC to ensure convergence under non-convex objectives. The experiments on different scenarios validate the effectiveness of FedDifRC and the efficiency of crucial components.
title FedDifRC: Unlocking the Potential of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models in Heterogeneous Federated Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06482