AllGCD: Leveraging All Unlabeled Data for Generalized Category Discovery

Abstract

Generalized Category Discovery (GCD) aims to identify both known and novel categories in unlabeled data by leveraging knowledge from labeled datasets. Current methods employ supervised contrastive learning on labeled data to capture known category structures but neglect unlabeled data, limiting their effectiveness in classifying novel classes, especially in fine-grained open-set detection where subtle class differences are crucial. To address this issue, we propose a novel learning approach, AllGCD, which seamlessly integrates all unlabeled data into contrastive learning to enhance the discrimination of novel classes. Specifically, we introduce two key techniques: Intra-class Contrast in Labeled Data (Intra-CL) and Inter-class Contrast in Unlabeled Data (Inter-CU). Intra-CL first refines intra-class compactness within known categories by integrating potential known samples into labeled data. This process refines the decision boundaries of known categories, reducing ambiguity when distinguishing novel categories. Building on this, Inter-CU further strengthens inter-class separation between known and novel categories by applying global contrastive learning to the class distribution in the unlabeled data. By jointly leveraging Intra-CL and Inter-CU, AllGCD effectively improves both intra-class compactness and inter-class separation, effectively enhancing the discriminability between known and novel classes. Experiments demonstrate that AllGCD significantly improves novel classes accuracy, e.g., achieving increases of 7.4% on CUB and 7.5% on Stanford Cars.