Diffusion Models

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Overview

Diffusion models learn a data distribution by gradually corrupting examples with noise and training a denoiser to reverse that process. Major approaches include DDPMs and score-based SDEs, latent diffusion and diffusion Transformers, flow and consistency methods, and discrete masked or continuous-time Markov diffusion; conditioning and guidance adapt them to specific tasks. They are used for images, video, audio, language, molecules, and scientific forecasting, with evaluations ranging from ImageNet FID to language perplexity and domain-specific measures of accuracy and uncertainty. A central tension is how to make sampling faster and generation more controllable without sacrificing quality, calibration, or diversity, while theory and ongoing audits address generalization, memorization, and privacy.

Latest papers

CardsList

1,192 papers152 papers in the last four weeks, up 77% on the four weeks before. 0.9% of all new papers.

  1. Generative diffusion models for spatiotemporal influenza forecasting

    Apr 27, 2026Joseph Lemaitre, Justin LesslerEpidemic ForecastingSpatiotemporal Forecasting

    Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA · Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA · Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA

  2. DiffuSAM: Diffusion-Based Prompt-Free SAM2 for Few-Shot and Source-Free Medical Image Segmentation

    Apr 27, 2026Tal Grossman, Noa Cahan, Lev Ayzenberg +1Diffusion ModelsImage Segmentation

    School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel · School of Biomedical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel

  3. Diffusion Model as a Generalist Segmentation Learner

    Apr 27, 2026Haoxiao Wang, Antao Xiang, Haiyang Sun +8Image SegmentationText-Guided Image Segmentation

    Zhejiang University · South China University of Technology · Nanjing University +1

  4. AD-Relight: Training-Free Banner Relighting via Illumination Translation with Diffusion Priors

    Apr 27, 2026Rameshwar Mishra, Bishshoy Das, A V Subramanyam +1Diffusion Model AdaptationImage Relighting

    Dolby Labs, Bangalore

  5. Diffusion Templates: A Unified Plugin Framework for Controllable Diffusion

    Apr 27, 2026Zhongjie Duan, Hong Zhang, Yingda ChenControllable Image GenerationDiffusion Models

    ModelScope Team, Alibaba Group

  6. Symmetric Equilibrium Propagation for Thermodynamic Diffusion Training

    Apr 26, 2026Aditi DeEquilibrium PropagationThermodynamic Computing

  7. On the Memorization of Consistency Distillation for Diffusion Models

    Apr 26, 2026Bingqing Jiang, Difan ZouMemorization in Generative ModelsConsistency Distillation

    School of Computing & Data Science, The University of Hong Kong. · School of Computing & Data Science and Institute of Data Science, The University of Hong Kong.

  8. Generative Modeling of Neurodegenerative Brain Anatomy with 4D Longitudinal Diffusion Model

    Apr 24, 2026Nivetha Jayakumar, Swakshar Deb, Bahram Jafrasteh +2Longitudinal Medical Image AnalysisMedical Image Synthesis

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22903, VA, USA · Department of Radiology, Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14850, NY, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22903, VA, USA

  9. Accelerating Frequency Domain Diffusion Models with Error-Feedback Event-Driven Caching

    Apr 24, 2026Dong Liu, Haisheng Wang, Yanxuan YuTime Series GenerationDiffusion Model Caching

    University of California, Los Angeles · Yale University · East China Normal University +1

  10. Breaking Watermarks in the Frequency Domain: A Modulated Diffusion Attack Framework

    Apr 24, 2026Chunpeng Wang, Binyan Qu, Xiaoyu Wang +4Watermark RemovalDiffusion Models

    Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) Jinan, Shandong Province, China · Dalian Maritime University Dalian, Liaoning Province, China · Nanjing University of Science and Technology Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China +1

  11. dWorldEval: Scalable Robotic Policy Evaluation via Discrete Diffusion World Model

    Apr 24, 2026Yaxuan Li, Zhongyi Zhou, Yefei Chen +2World Models for RoboticsRobotic Policy Evaluation

    Current Robotics · University of Toronto

  12. Quotient-Space Diffusion Models

    Apr 23, 2026Yixian Xu, Yusong Wang, Shengjie Luo +4Protein Structure GenerationGenerative Modeling

    State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China · State Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Hybrid Augmented Intelligence, Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi’an Jiaotong University · Zhongguancun Academy, Beijing, China +2

  13. MISTY: High-Throughput Motion Planning via Mixer-based Single-step Drifting

    Apr 23, 2026Yining Xing, Zehong Ke, Yiqian Tu +3Trajectory GenerationDiffusion-Based Planning

    School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Green Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

  14. Pre-process for segmentation task with nonlinear diffusion filters

    Apr 23, 2026Javier Sanguino, Carlos Platero, Olga VelascoImage SegmentationDiffusion Models

    Health Science Technology Group, Technical University of Madrid, Ronda de Valencia 3, 28012, Madrid, Spain.

  15. AttDiff-GAN: A Hybrid Diffusion-GAN Framework for Facial Attribute Editing

    Apr 23, 2026Wenmin Huang, Weiqi Luo, Xiaochun Cao +1Diffusion Model GuidanceDiffusion-Based Image Editing

    GuangDong Province Key Lab of Information Security Technology and School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangdong 510000, China · School of Cyber Science and Technology, Shenzhen Campus, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China · Guangdong Laboratory of Machine Perception and Intelligent Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, Shenzhen, 518116, China

  16. Projected Gradient Unlearning for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models: Defending Against Concept Revival Attacks

    Apr 22, 2026Aljalila Aladawi, Mohammed Talha Alam, Fakhri KarrayDiffusion Model Fine-TuningDiffusion Model Unlearning

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE. · University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

  17. Dream-Cubed: Controllable Generative Modeling in Minecraft by Training on Billions of Cubes

    Apr 22, 2026Tim Merino, Sam Earle, Ryunosuke Iwai +23D Scene Generation3D Shape Generation

    New York University · Sakana AI

  18. HarmoniDiff-RS: Training-Free Diffusion Harmonization for Satellite Image Composition

    Apr 21, 2026Xiaoqi Zhuang, Jefersson A. Dos Santos, Jungong HanCompositional Image GenerationRemote Sensing

    The University of Sheffield · Tsinghua University

  19. Learning to Credit the Right Steps: Objective-aware Process Optimization for Visual Generation

    Apr 21, 2026Rui Li, Ke Hao, Yuanzhi Liang +4Multi-Objective Reinforcement LearningVideo Diffusion Models

    University of Science and Technology of China HeFei, China · Shanghai Jiao Tong University ShangHai, China · TeleAI ShangHai, China

  20. One Step Forward and K Steps Back: Better Reasoning with Denoising Recursion Models

    Apr 20, 2026Chris Cameron, Wangzheng Wang, Nikita Ivanov +3Abstract ReasoningRecurrent Transformers

    Huawei Technologies · University of Waterloo · University of Toronto

  21. Discriminative-Generative Synergy for Occlusion Robust 3D Human Mesh Recovery

    Apr 20, 2026Yang Liu, Zhiyong Zhang3D ReconstructionHuman Mesh Recovery

    School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

  22. UDM-GRPO: Stable and Efficient Group Relative Policy Optimization for Uniform Discrete Diffusion Models

    Apr 20, 2026Jiaqi Wang, Haoge Deng, Ting Pan +5T2I GenerationGroup Relative Policy Optimization

    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence

  23. One-Step Diffusion with Inverse Residual Fields for Unsupervised Industrial Anomaly Detection

    Apr 20, 2026Boan Zhang, Wen Li, Guanhua Yu +3Industrial Anomaly DetectionUnsupervised Anomaly Detection

    Department of Computer Science and Technology Xidian University Shaanxi, China 710126 · Department of Electronic Engineering Xidian University Shaanxi, China 710126

  24. DiffTSP: A Conditional Discrete Diffusion Model for Knowledge Graph Triple Set Prediction

    Apr 20, 2026Jihong Guan, Jiaqi Wang, Han Cai +5Link PredictionKG Completion

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, Shanghai, China · School of Computer Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

  25. Efficient Diffusion Models under Nonconvex Equality and Inequality constraints via Landing

    Apr 20, 2026Kijung Jeon, Michael Muehlebach, Molei TaoConstrained Generative ModelingLangevin Dynamics

    Georgia Institute of Technology · Max Planck Institute for Int. Sys.

  26. AnyLift: Scaling Motion Reconstruction from Internet Videos via 2D Diffusion

    Apr 20, 2026Hongjie Li, Heng Yu, Jiaman Li +4Markerless Motion Capture3D Reconstruction

    Stanford University · H. Li is now with Peking University

  27. Optimally Bridging Semantics and Data: Generative Semantic Communication via Schrödinger Bridge

    Apr 20, 2026Dahua Gao, Ruichao Liu, Minxi Yang +3Semantic CommunicationFew-Step Diffusion Sampling

    School of Artificial Intelligence, Xidian University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710071 China · Pazhou Lab, Huangpu, Guangdong 510555 China · Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055 China +1

  28. Structure-Adaptive Sparse Diffusion in Voxel Space for 3D Medical Image Enhancement

    Apr 20, 2026Hongxu Jiang, Fei Li, Boxiao Yu +43D Medical ImagingMedical Image Super-Resolution

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA · Department of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA · Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL +2

  29. A Mechanistic Study of Algorithmic Generalization in Diffusion Models on Modular Arithmetic

    Apr 20, 2026Joon Hyeok Kim, Yong-Hyun Park, Mattis Dalsætra Østby +1Pixel-Space Diffusion ModelsMechanistic Interpretability

    Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

  30. Target Parameterization in Diffusion Models for Nonlinear Spatiotemporal System Identification

    Apr 19, 2026Achraf El Messaoudi, Noureddine Khaous, Karim CherifiNonlinear System IdentificationSpatiotemporal Forecasting

    Universit´e Marie Louis Pasteur, SUPMICROTECH, CNRS, institut FEMTO-ST, F-25000 Besanc¸on, France · LLF, CNRS, Universit´e Paris Cit´e, F-75013 Paris, France