arXiv Machine Learning

Two-Stage Score Estimation for Group-Specific Diffusion Models

The paper introduces a statistical framework for diffusion transfer in generative modeling across related distributions. It analyzes a shared pooled score and a target‑specific offset, deriving convergence rates that separate the learning costs of these components. The authors prove that under certain regularity assumptions the offset remains bounded and jointly regular as diffusion time approaches zero, enabling polynomially vanishing lower time cutoffs and total‑variation guarantees for diffusion models as density estimators, with synthetic simulations and image benchmarks illustrating the approach.

arXiv AI
Jun 24

Catastrophic Compositional Generation: Why Vanilla Diffusion Models Fail to Extrapolate

arXiv:2606. 23920v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The task of compositional generation involves using a conditional generative model, trained only on a subset of the possible conditions, to produce samples from compositionally-defined target distributions such as a geometric combination of the source distributions.

By Duncan Soiffer, Chandler Squires, Yuan Guan, Jason Hartford, Pradeep Ravikumar
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 2

Control Variate Score Matching for Diffusion Models

arXiv:2512.20003v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Sampling from unnormalized probability densities is a pervasive challenge across the computational and physical sciences. Diffusion models provide...

By Khaled Kahouli, Romuald Elie, Klaus-Robert M\"uller, Quentin Berthet, Oliver T. Unke, Arnaud Doucet
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Improved off-policy training of diffusion samplers

The paper investigates training diffusion models to sample from distributions defined by unnormalized densities or energy functions. It benchmarks various diffusion-structured inference techniques, including simulation-based variational methods and off-policy approaches such as continuous generative flow networks, highlighting their relative strengths and challenging some prior claims. Additionally, the authors introduce a new exploration strategy for off-policy methods that employs local search in the target space with a replay buffer, demonstrating improved sample quality across multiple target distributions.

By Marcin Sendera, Minsu Kim, Sarthak Mittal, Pablo Lemos, Luca Scimeca, Jarrid Rector-Brooks, Alexandre Adam, Yoshua Bengio, Esmeralda S. Whitammer
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 14

Likelihood Matching for Diffusion Models

arXiv:2508. 03636v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose a Likelihood Matching approach for training diffusion models by first establishing an equivalence between the likelihood of the target data distribution and a likelihood along the sample path of the reverse diffusion.

By Lei Qian, Wu Su, Yanqi Huang, Song Xi Chen
arXiv Statistics ML
Oct 16

Optimal score function estimation via derivatives constraints

The paper develops a statistical framework showing that empirical score matching can achieve minimax optimal performance for diffusion generative models when data lie on a low‑dimensional manifold. It establishes convergence rates for empirical risk minimization over constrained Sobolev classes and demonstrates that the resulting score estimators yield minimax optimal Wasserstein‑1 rates for the generated distribution, up to logarithmic factors. The analysis reveals that the statistical rates depend on the intrinsic dimension of the data manifold rather than its ambient dimension, providing conditions under which score‑based generative modeling generalizes rather than overfits.

By Thomas Bonis, Thanh Mai Pham Ngoc, Viet Chi Tran
arXiv AI
Jun 10

MMD Guidance: Training-Free Distribution Adaptation for Diffusion Models via Maximum Mean Discrepancy Guidance

arXiv:2601. 08379v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Pre-trained diffusion models have emerged as powerful generative priors for both unconditional and conditional sample generation, yet their outputs often deviate from the characteristics of user-specific target data.

By Matina Mahdizadeh Sani, Nima Jamali, Mohammad Jalali, Farzan Farnia