SCE-LITE-HQ: Smooth visual counterfactual explanations with generative foundation models

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17048v1
• Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:31:13 GMT
• Title: SCE-LITE-HQ: Smooth visual counterfactual explanations with generative foundation models
• Abstract summary: Counterfactual explanations provide principled approach to interpreting black-box predictions.<n>Existing CFE methods often rely on dataset-specific generative models.<n>We propose SCE-LITE-HQ, a scalable framework for counterfactual generation.
• Score: 0.8594140167290097
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Modern neural networks achieve strong performance but remain difficult to interpret in high-dimensional visual domains. Counterfactual explanations (CFEs) provide a principled approach to interpreting black-box predictions by identifying minimal input changes that alter model outputs. However, existing CFE methods often rely on dataset-specific generative models and incur substantial computational cost, limiting their scalability to high-resolution data. We propose SCE-LITE-HQ, a scalable framework for counterfactual generation that leverages pretrained generative foundation models without task-specific retraining. The method operates in the latent space of the generator, incorporates smoothed gradients to improve optimization stability, and applies mask-based diversification to promote realistic and structurally diverse counterfactuals. We evaluate SCE-LITE-HQ on natural and medical datasets using a desiderata-driven evaluation protocol. Results show that SCE-LITE-HQ produces valid, realistic, and diverse counterfactuals competitive with or outperforming existing baselines, while avoiding the overhead of training dedicated generative models.

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