Diffusion Sensitivity Geometry and Strong Duality for Optimal Privacy-Utility Tradeoffs

Abstract

Existing approaches to differential privacy in diffusion models rely on loose sensitivity bounds and isotropic Gaussian noise, leading to unnecessary estimation error. We develop a framework for the optimal privacy-utility tradeoff of ideal diffusion denoisers, replacing conservative bounds with exact sensitivity characterizations and provably optimal noise calibration. First, we show that worst-case sensitivity over datasets of arbitrary size can be characterized exactly using only two records. For a data domain of size $m$, this reduces the analysis to at most $m(m-1)$ constraints, regardless of dataset size. Our characterization can be arbitrarily tighter than conventional diameter-based sensitivity bounds, revealing potentially unbounded improvements in noise calibration. Second, we obtain exact privacy guarantees for R\'enyi, approximate, and Gaussian differential privacy, as well as mutual-information privacy for binary records, avoiding the looseness of previous generic privacy conversions. Finally, we show that the minimum achievable weighted mean-squared error can be computed through a semidefinite program and prove strong duality, providing certificates of global optimality.