The Persistence of Cultural Memory: Investigating Multimodal Iconicity in Diffusion Models

Abstract

The ambiguity between generalization and memorization in TTI diffusion models becomes pronounced when prompts invoke culturally shared visual references, a phenomenon we term multimodal iconicity. These are instances in which images and texts reflect established cultural associations, such as when a title recalls a familiar artwork or film scene. Such cases challenge existing approaches to evaluating memorization, as they define a setting in which instance-level memorization and culturally grounded generalization are structurally intertwined. To address this challenge, we propose an evaluation framework to assess a model's ability to remain culturally grounded without relying on visual replication. Specifically, we introduce the Cultural Reference Transformation (CRT) metric, which separates two dimensions of model behavior: Recognition, whether a model evokes a reference, from Realization, how it depicts it through replication or reinterpretation. We evaluate five diffusion models on 767 Wikidata-derived cultural references, covering both still and moving imagery, and find differences in how they respond to multimodal iconicity: some show weaker recognition, while others rely more heavily on replication. To assess linguistic sensitivity, we conduct prompt perturbation experiments using synonym substitutions and literal image descriptions, finding that models often reproduce iconic visual structures even when textual cues are altered. Finally, we find that cultural reference recognition correlates not only with training data frequency, but also textual uniqueness, reference popularity, and creation date. Our findings show that the behavior of diffusion models in culturally iconic settings cannot be reduced to simple reproduction, but depends on how references are recognized and realized, advancing evaluation beyond simple text-image matching toward richer contextual understanding.