Still, even when present in very small quantities, the paper appears to show that approximate memorization in latent diffusion models does exist, and that could have implications for data privacy and copyright. The results may one day affect potential image synthesis regulation if the AI models become considered “lossy databases” that can reproduce training data, as one AI pundit speculated. Although considering the 0.03 percent hit rate, they would have to be considered very, very lossy databases—perhaps to a statistically insignificant degree.

Edwards, B. (2023, February 1). Paper: Stable Diffusion “memorizes” some images, sparking privacy concerns. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/researchers-extract-training-images-from-stable-diffusion-but-its-difficult/