In zero-shot learning (ZSL), generative methods synthesize class-related
sample features based on predefined semantic prototypes. They advance the ZSL
performance by synthesizing unseen class sample features for better training
the classifier. We observe that each class's predefined semantic prototype
(also referred to as semantic embedding or condition) does not accurately match
its real semantic prototype. So the synthesized visual sample features do not
faithfully represent the real sample features, limiting the classifier training
and existing ZSL performance. In this paper, we formulate this mismatch
phenomenon as the visual-semantic domain shift problem. We propose a dynamic
semantic prototype evolving (DSP) method to align the empirically predefined
semantic prototypes and the real prototypes for class-related feature
synthesis. The alignment is learned by refining sample features and semantic
prototypes in a unified framework and making the synthesized visual sample
features approach real sample features. After alignment, synthesized sample
features from unseen classes are closer to the real sample features and benefit
DSP to improve existing generative ZSL methods by 8.5\%, 8.0\%, and 9.7\% on
the standard CUB, SUN AWA2 datasets, the significant performance improvement
indicates that evolving semantic prototype explores a virgin field in ZSL.

本文提出动态语义原型演化方法（DSP）以对齐经验预定义语义原型并使合成的视觉样本特征更接近真实样本特征，从而提高现有生成 ZSL 方法的性能。