Linking in Style: Understanding learned features in deep learning models

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) learn abstract features to perform object classification, but understanding these features remains challenging due to difficult-to-interpret results or high computational costs. We propose an automatic method to systematically visualize and objectively analyze learned features in CNNs. Specifically, we introduce a linking network that maps the penultimate layer of a pre-trained classifier to the latent space of a generative model (StyleGAN-XL), thereby enabling an interpretable, human-friendly visualization of the classifier's representations. Our findings indicate a congruent semantic order in both spaces, enabling a direct linear mapping between them. Training the linking network is computationally inexpensive and decoupled from training both the GAN and the classifier. We introduce an automatic pipeline that utilizes such GAN-based visualizations to quantify learned representations by analyzing activation changes in the classifier in the image domain. This quantification allows us to investigate learned representations in several thousand units simultaneously and to extract and visualize units selective for specific semantic concepts. Further, we illustrate how our method can quantify and interpret the classifier's decision boundary using counterfactual examples. Overall, our method offers systematic and objective perspectives on learned abstract representations in CNNs.