Diffusion Language Models

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Overview

Diffusion language models generate text by starting from corrupted or masked sequences and repeatedly refining them, using context from both earlier and later positions. Main approaches include discrete masked diffusion, continuous latent or flow-based models, and block or hybrid designs that combine parallel refinement with autoregressive structure. Work explores adaptive token ordering, remasking, distillation, and caching to improve reasoning, code generation, multimodal tasks, and inference speed. A central tension is balancing faster, more parallel decoding against token dependencies and output quality, while reliable evaluation and the cost of training from scratch remain open challenges.

Latest papers

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473 papers99 papers in the last four weeks, up 130% on the four weeks before. 0.6% of all new papers.

  1. Beyond On-Policy Exploration: Integrating External Policy Rollouts for Reinforcement Learning in Diffusion Language Models

    Aug 3, 2026Wonseok Lee, Jimyeong Kim, Jungmin Ko +1RL for Language Model ReasoningRL for Diffusion Models

    Interdisciplinary Program in Artificial Intelligence, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, South Korea · Artificial Intelligence Institute, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, South Korea · Department of Intelligence and Information, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, South Korea

  2. DeltaFlow: Noise-Adaptive Bidirectional Gated Delta Networks for Embedded Language Flows

    Aug 2, 2026Guangfu Guo, Xiaoqian Lu, Linsey Pang +4Gated Delta NetworksDiffusion Language Models

    1Clemson University · University of Ottawa · 3PayPal +1

  3. Escaping Confidence Trap: Evolutionary Decoding for Mathematical Reasoning in Diffusion LLMs

    Aug 1, 2026Zhenhong Sun, Hanqing Zhao, Yatao Bian +7Test-Time ScalingDiffusion Language Model Decoding

    Australian National University Canberra, Australia · Nanyang Technological University Singapore · National University of Singapore Singapore +2

  4. DiffusionGemma Technical Report

    Jul 31, 2026DiffusionGemma Team, Adrien Ali Taïga, James Assiene +41Diffusion Language Model DecodingBlockwise Diffusion Language Models

  5. CORA-Diff: Confidence-Oriented Residual Acceptance for Efficient Diffusion Language Model Inference

    Jul 31, 2026Yifan Wu, Yufeng Zhang, Kenli LiDiffusion Model ServingDiffusion Language Model Inference

    College of Computer Science, Hunan University Changsha 410082, China

  6. Faster but Different: Diagnosing and Controlling Content Drift in Accelerated Multimodal Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 31, 2026Yaoxuan Dou, Yang ShuMultimodal Large Language ModelsDiffusion Language Model Inference

    School of Mathematics and Statistics, Beijing Institute of Technology Beijing, China

  7. Commit Locally, Exit Globally: Coordinating Adaptive Sampling and Early Exit in Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 30, 2026Chia-Ming Lee, Shao-Kai Liu, Ming-Ching Chang +3Diffusion Language Model InferenceDiffusion Language Model Decoding

    National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University · University at Albany, SUNY

  8. Latent-Kernel Discrete Flow Maps for Few-Step Generation

    Jul 29, 2026Mansoor Ahmed, Yue-Tsz Fan, Hemanth Venkateswara +1Latent Variable ModelsFew-Step Diffusion Sampling

    Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA · Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

  9. Beyond the Bidirectional Promise: Re-evaluating the Robustness of Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 29, 2026Saurabh Yadav, Badri Narayana Patro, Vijay Srinivas AgneeswaranLanguage Model CalibrationDiffusion Language Models

    Microsoft

  10. PreDiff-LM: Pretrained Discrete Masked Diffusion Language Modeling with Hybrid Attention

    Jul 28, 2026Zhengtao Yao, Runhao Li, Xupeng Chen +12Masked Diffusion ModelsAttention Control in Diffusion Models

    University of Southern California · New York University · Columbia University +4

  11. UNIFUSION: Adapting Autoregressive Language Models into Discrete Diffusion under a Unified Reverse-Rate Objective

    Jul 27, 2026Xiaoyi Jiang, Jingyuan Li, Yixuan Jiang +4Diffusion Language ModelsDiffusion Models

    Tsinghua University · MathonAI · Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications +1

  12. Rethinking the Generation Order of Block Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 27, 2026Kai Syun Hou, James KwokDiffusion Model SamplingBlockwise Diffusion Language Models

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

  13. Neuromorphic Diffusion Language Models: Addressing Compute and Memory Bottlenecks via Sparsity and Block Denoising

    Jul 24, 2026Dengyu Wu, Clement Ruah, Jiechen Chen +2Diffusion Language Model DecodingNeuromorphic Computing

    Department of Engineering, King’s College London, London, UK · Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI), Northeastern University London, London, UK

  14. Mean-to-Score Discrete Diffusion: Posterior-Mean Denoisers for Score Entropy

    Jul 23, 2026Jingyuan Li, Xiaoyi Jiang, Yixuan Jiang +4Constrained Generative ModelingMarkov Models

    Tsinghua University · Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications · Wuhan University +1

  15. Multi-Mask Diffusion Language Models for Few-Step Generation

    Jul 22, 2026Sijin Chen, Yinuo Ren, Heyang Zhao +3Masked Diffusion ModelsDiffusion Model Distillation

    ByteDance Seed · Princeton University · Stanford University +2

  16. Speculative Correction: Draft-then-Refine Decoding for Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 21, 2026Brian K Chen, Chong Wu, Kenji KawaguchiLanguage Model DecodingSpeculative Decoding for Diffusion Language Models

    National University of Singapore · City University of Hong Kong

  17. ST-Veto: Spatio-Temporal Token Veto for Diffusion MLLMs via Taylor Prediction and Visual Grounding

    Jul 20, 2026Keuntae Kim, Beomseok Lee, Hyunwoo Kim +1VLM ReasoningDiffusion Language Model Decoding

    Hanyang University · LG Electronics · KT Corporation

  18. FlowBlock: Wavefront-Parallel Decoding for Self-Correcting Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 20, 2026Bing Tian, Haikun Liu, Xiaocheng Zhong +5Blockwise Diffusion Language ModelsParallel Decoding

    † Huazhong University of Science and Technology · § Xiaohongshu Inc., China

  19. Trace-Based On-Policy Distillation for Masked Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 18, 2026Haolin Ren, Ziyang Huang, Chenhao Yuan +2Masked Diffusion ModelsDiffusion Model Distillation

    Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

  20. A Continuous-Time Reinforcement Learning Framework for Fine-Tuning Discrete Diffusion Models

    Jul 16, 2026Zikun Zhang, Jiayuan Sheng, David D. Yao +1Masked Diffusion ModelsRL for Language Model Reasoning

    Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

  21. Audio-Native Speech Recognition with a Frozen Discrete-Diffusion Language Model

    Jul 14, 2026Harsha Vardhan Khurdula, Abhinav Kumar Singh, Yoeven D Khemlani +1Automatic Speech RecognitionDiffusion Language Models

    Interfaze AI · San Francisco, CA, USA

  22. BlockServe: Block-Grained Continuous Batching for High-Throughput Diffusion LLM Serving

    Jul 9, 2026Yuanjie Zhu, Liangwei Yang, Ke Xu +4LLM Inference SchedulingDiffusion Model Serving

    University of Illinois Chicago, USA

  23. Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion: A Tri-Mode Language Model Unifying Autoregressive, Diffusion, and Self-Speculation Decoding

    Jul 7, 2026Yonggan Fu, Lexington Whalen, Abhinav Garg +23Autoregressive DiffusionAutoregressive Language Modeling

    NVIDIA · Georgia Tech · Work done during internships at NVIDIA +3

  24. Don't Commit Alone: Joint Token Commitment in Diffusion Large Language Models

    Jul 5, 2026Lin YaoDiffusion Language Model DecodingDiffusion Language Models

    School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China · Zhongguancun Academy, Beijing, 100097, China

  25. dOPSD: On-Policy Self-Distillation for Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 5, 2026Phuong Tuan Dat, Qi Li, Xinchao WangOn-Policy Self-DistillationLanguage Model Distillation

    National University of Singapore

  26. DELTA-TTS: Adapting Autoregressive Model into Diffusion Language Model for Text-to-Speech

    Jul 5, 2026Junwon Moon, Yejin Lee, Seungbeom Kim +4TTS SynthesisDiffusion Model Fine-Tuning

    Sungkyunkwan University · University of Seoul

  27. Training Hybrid Block Diffusion Language Models with Partial Bidirectionality

    Jul 2, 2026Pranshu Chaturvedi, Parth Shroff, Tarun Suresh +2Blockwise Diffusion Language ModelsDiffusion Language Models

    Stanford University

  28. Set Diffusion: Interpolating Token Orderings Between Autoregression and Diffusion for Fast and Flexible Decoding

    Jul 2, 2026Marianne Arriola, Volodymyr KuleshovLanguage Model DecodingDiffusion Language Model Decoding

    Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.

  29. Subliminal Clocks: Latent Time Modelling in Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 2, 2026Maximo Rulli, Thomas Fontanari, Simone Petruzzi +9Diffusion Language ModelsRepresentation Geometry in Language Models

    Sapienza University of Rome · EPFL · Independent researcher

  30. Discrete Diffusion Language Models for Interactive Radiology Report Drafting

    Jul 1, 2026Max Van Puyvelde, Halil Ibrahim Gulluk, Wim Van Criekinge +1Radiology Report GenerationDiffusion Language Models

    Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University School of Medicine · Department of Mathematical Modelling, Statistics & Bioinformatics, Ghent University · Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University