DiffusionReward: Enhancing Blind Face Restoration through Reward Feedback Learning

Abstract: Reward Feedback Learning (ReFL) has recently shown great potential in aligning model outputs with human preferences across various generative tasks. In this work, we introduce a ReFL framework, named DiffusionReward, to the Blind Face Restoration task for the first time. DiffusionReward effectively overcomes the limitations of diffusion-based methods, which often fail to generate realistic facial details and exhibit poor identity consistency. The core of our framework is the Face Reward Model (FRM), which is trained using carefully annotated data. It provides feedback signals that play a pivotal role in steering the optimization process of the restoration network. In particular, our ReFL framework incorporates a gradient flow into the denoising process of off-the-shelf face restoration methods to guide the update of model parameters. The guiding gradient is collaboratively determined by three aspects: (i) the FRM to ensure the perceptual quality of the restored faces; (ii) a regularization term that functions as a safeguard to preserve generative diversity; and (iii) a structural consistency constraint to maintain facial fidelity. Furthermore, the FRM undergoes dynamic optimization throughout the process. It not only ensures that the restoration network stays precisely aligned with the real face manifold, but also effectively prevents reward hacking. Experiments on synthetic and wild datasets demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods, significantly improving identity consistency and facial details. The source codes, data, and models are available at: https://github.com/01NeuralNinja/DiffusionReward.