Gradient-Guided Reward Optimization for Inference-time Alignment
arXiv:2606. 09635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Ensuring the reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs) under distribution drift requires inference-time adaptation.
arXiv:2603. 14504v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Optimizing the noise samples of diffusion and flow models is an increasingly popular approach to align these models to target rewards at inference time.
arXiv:2606. 09635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Ensuring the reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs) under distribution drift requires inference-time adaptation.
The paper introduces GRAS, a method that improves training‑free reward alignment for discrete diffusion models by reducing variance in guided proposals and adapting the resampling temperature during search. It achieves this without adding denoiser cost, using Rao‑Blackwellized estimates for differentiable rewards and a leave‑one‑out baseline for non‑differentiable ones. Experiments on regulatory DNA and protein design show GRAS outperforms existing training‑free techniques and rivals reward‑fine‑tuned models.
arXiv:2606. 18066v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We introduce the Noise-Tilted Reverse Kernel (NTRK), a reward-guided diffusion sampler that injects reward gradients through the noise term, leaving the pretrained reverse kernel unchanged and requiring only a single sample per step.
arXiv:2604. 17415v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reward-based fine-tuning steers a pretrained diffusion or flow-based generative model toward higher-reward samples while remaining close to the pretrained model.
The paper introduces ZeNOVA, a gradient‑free method for aligning initial noise in generative models. It uses annealed soft‑value guidance, manifold‑constrained hyperspherical Langevin dynamics, and Metropolis‑Hastings jumps to address instability in black‑box reward settings. Experiments on image and video models show ZeNOVA outperforms existing zeroth‑order baselines by more stably optimizing noise toward higher rewards.
Diffusion models have strong generative capabilities. However, their maximum likelihood training objective only focuses on reconstructing the data distribution, making it difficult to align with specific preferences.
arXiv:2509. 26405v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce InVirtuoGen, a discrete flow generative model for fragmented SMILES for de novo and fragment-constrained generation, and target-property/lead optimization of small molecules.
arXiv:2608.30194v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion models have recently advanced text-to-video (T2V) generation, yet they still struggle with fine-grained compositional alignment, such as attr...
arXiv:2604. 27147v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In generative modeling, we often wish to produce samples that maximize a user-specified reward such as aesthetic quality or alignment with human preferences, a problem known as \textit{guidance}.
arXiv:2608. 03929v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Aligning diffusion models with human preferences usually relies on a sparse terminal reward evaluated on the final generated samples, presenting a severe temporal credit-assignment challenge across the multi-step denoising process.
arXiv:2607. 00691v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Black-box optimization is a fundamental science and engineering tool that makes it possible to optimize objectives without gradient information.
arXiv:2606. 01220v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Generating molecules that simultaneously satisfy drug-like properties and conform to the 3D structure of a target protein is a core challenge in structure-based drug design (SBDD).