Adversarial Training Improves Generalization Under Distribution Shifts in Bioacoustics

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Heinrich, René, Rauch, Lukas, Sick, Bernhard, Scholz, Christoph
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Heinrich, René
Rauch, Lukas
Sick, Bernhard
Scholz, Christoph
author_facet Heinrich, René
Rauch, Lukas
Sick, Bernhard
Scholz, Christoph
contents Adversarial training is a promising strategy for enhancing model robustness against adversarial attacks. However, its impact on generalization under substantial data distribution shifts in audio classification remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, this work investigates how different adversarial training strategies improve generalization performance and adversarial robustness in audio classification. The study focuses on two model architectures: a conventional convolutional neural network (ConvNeXt) and an inherently interpretable prototype-based model (AudioProtoPNet). The approach is evaluated using a challenging bird sound classification benchmark. This benchmark is characterized by pronounced distribution shifts between training and test data due to varying environmental conditions and recording methods, a common real-world challenge. The investigation explores two adversarial training strategies: one based on output-space attacks that maximize the classification loss function, and another based on embedding-space attacks designed to maximize embedding dissimilarity. These attack types are also used for robustness evaluation. Additionally, for AudioProtoPNet, the study assesses the stability of its learned prototypes under targeted embedding-space attacks. Results show that adversarial training, particularly using output-space attacks, improves clean test data performance by an average of 10.5% relative and simultaneously strengthens the adversarial robustness of the models. These findings, although derived from the bird sound domain, suggest that adversarial training holds potential to enhance robustness against both strong distribution shifts and adversarial attacks in challenging audio classification settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_13727
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adversarial Training Improves Generalization Under Distribution Shifts in Bioacoustics
Heinrich, René
Rauch, Lukas
Sick, Bernhard
Scholz, Christoph
Machine Learning
Adversarial training is a promising strategy for enhancing model robustness against adversarial attacks. However, its impact on generalization under substantial data distribution shifts in audio classification remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, this work investigates how different adversarial training strategies improve generalization performance and adversarial robustness in audio classification. The study focuses on two model architectures: a conventional convolutional neural network (ConvNeXt) and an inherently interpretable prototype-based model (AudioProtoPNet). The approach is evaluated using a challenging bird sound classification benchmark. This benchmark is characterized by pronounced distribution shifts between training and test data due to varying environmental conditions and recording methods, a common real-world challenge. The investigation explores two adversarial training strategies: one based on output-space attacks that maximize the classification loss function, and another based on embedding-space attacks designed to maximize embedding dissimilarity. These attack types are also used for robustness evaluation. Additionally, for AudioProtoPNet, the study assesses the stability of its learned prototypes under targeted embedding-space attacks. Results show that adversarial training, particularly using output-space attacks, improves clean test data performance by an average of 10.5% relative and simultaneously strengthens the adversarial robustness of the models. These findings, although derived from the bird sound domain, suggest that adversarial training holds potential to enhance robustness against both strong distribution shifts and adversarial attacks in challenging audio classification settings.
title Adversarial Training Improves Generalization Under Distribution Shifts in Bioacoustics
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13727