Analysis-by-Proxy Finds Latent Localization Signals in VLM Condition Encoders

arXiv·low signal

This paper shows that VLMs used as conditioning backbones for diffusion image editing carry latent localization signals — they implicitly encode where objects are even when serving only as encoders. It is a useful interpretability signal for builders of controllable image-editing pipelines who want to exploit spatial information already present in the encoder. Low importance as it is diagnostic rather than a shipped method.