Early Signatures of Memorization in Diffusion Models via Basin Geometry and Cyclic Denoising
This study addresses the challenge of detecting memorization in diffusion models prior to generation by proposing an early auditing method grounded in energy landscape geometry. The research reveals that memorization manifests before output generation, introducing the concept of "latent memorization." By identifying degenerate attractors, it refines the conventional logic that equates memorization solely with basin residence time. Through score divergence, basin volume analysis, and cyclic denoising techniques to probe local basins surrounding training samples, the method enables early identification and isolation of memorized content. Supported by theoretical proofs and multi-dataset experiments, this approach successfully recovers training images on CelebA without explicit replication and achieves an AUC of 0.944 on Stable Diffusion, significantly advancing the detection window for model memorization.