We show evidence that DALL-E 2, in stark contrast to humans, does not respect the constraint that each word has a single role in its visual interpretation.
We detail three types of behaviors that are inconsistent with the single role per word constraint
(1) A noun with multiple senses in an ambiguous prompt may cause DALL-E 2 to generate the same noun twice, but with different senses. In “a bat is flying over a baseball stadium”, “bat” is visualized as both: a flying mammal and a wooden stick.
(2) A noun may be interpreted as a modifier of two different entities. For “a fish and a gold ingot”, DALL-E 2 will consistently include a goldfish, despite “gold” being a modifier of “ingot”, not “fish”
(3) A noun is interpreted simultaneously as an entity and as a modifier of a different entity. For “a seal is opening a letter”, DALL-E 2 tends to attribute the “sealed” property to the letter
Bonus finding: some nouns can be replaced with their description, and still lead to the first behavior. “crane” is not explicitly mentioned in “a tall, long-legged, long-necked bird and a construction site”, but two types of crane appear for its interpretation
If you’re interested to read more about this cool phenomenon, give our paper a read!