RL for Diffusion Models

RL: Reinforcement Learning

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17 papers in the last four weeks, up 467% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

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  1. Reachability-Aware Diffusion Policy Optimization

    Oct 5, 2026Hikmet Simsir, Kutay Demiray, Ozgur S. OguzConstrained RLDiffusion Policy

    Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University

  2. MGPO: Manifold-Guided Diffusion Alignment for Task-Aware Dataset Distillation

    Oct 4, 2026Yunyi Chen, Chenru Wang, Xinyi Ye +2Diffusion Model AlignmentDataset Distillation

    AGI Lab, Westlake University · Eindhoven University of Technology · Guangdong University of Finance and Economics

  3. Token-Level Video Reinforcement Learning

    Oct 1, 2026Yifan Wang, Gordon Guocheng Qian, Yanyu Li +2Video Diffusion ModelsRL for Video Generation

    Northeastern University

  4. iADD: Improving Alignment and Diversity in Diffusion Policy Optimization

    Oct 1, 2026Ashok Prasad Neupane, Saugat Adhikari, Pramish Paudel +2Diffusion Model AlignmentGenerative Modeling

    Pulchowk Campus, IOE, Tribhuvan University, Lalitpur, Nepal · INSAIT, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria · NAAMII, Kathmandu, Nepal

  5. Exploring More, Reasoning Better: Stepwise Risk-Sensitive GRPO for Diffusion Language Models

    Sep 30, 2026Yue YU, Bowen Zuo, David Crandall +2RL for Language Model ReasoningGroup Relative Policy Optimization

    Indiana University · University of California, Riverside

  6. Fork-dLLM: Avoiding the Flexibility Trap in Diffusion Language Models

    Sep 30, 2026Stipe Frković, Metod Jazbec, Christian A. NaessethMasked Diffusion ModelsSpeculative Decoding for Diffusion Language Models

    University of Amsterdam · UvA-Bosch Delta Lab, University of Amsterdam

  7. CAST: Causal Advantage-Structured Training with Spatially Grounded Compositional Rewards for Diffusion Models

    Sep 30, 2026Shu Yu, Chaochao LuDiffusion Model Fine-TuningCompositional T2I Generation

    Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Shanghai, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute, Shanghai, China · Fudan University, Shanghai, China

  8. ExploreNet: Learning Where to Explore in Diffusion GRPO

    Sep 29, 2026Shuyue Stella Li, Xiaochuang Han, Yulia Tsvetkov +1Diffusion Model Fine-TuningRL Exploration

    University of Washington

  9. MeanFlowAdvantage: Stable Reward Fine-Tuning for Few-Step Average-Velocity Generators

    Sep 29, 2026Haocheng Tang, Tianchi Xie, Xingqiao LinFlow MatchingMeanFlow

    Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115, USA · Tsinghua University Beijing, 100084, PRC · Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

  10. Adaptive Reward Routing: Dynamic Multi-Reward Optimization for Joint Audio-Video Diffusion via Forward-Process RL

    Sep 29, 2026Songlin Yang, Xiaotong Zhao, Jiacheng Zhang +5Multi-Objective Reinforcement LearningCross-Modal Alignment

    Tencent Video · The University of Hong Kong

  11. Unified Trajectory Matching Policy Optimization: Diverse T2I Generation and VLA Generalization

    Sep 28, 2026Zhiyuan Ma, Jiaming Li, Lingzhen Li +7Reinforcement LearningVision-Language-Action Models

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

  12. Principal Steering Subspaces for Online Adaptation of Frozen Generative Robot Policies

    Sep 27, 2026Jialeng Ni, Nathan Zhao, Kunpeng SongRobot Policy LearningReinforcement Learning

    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. · XPENG Robotics, Santa Clara, CA, USA.

  13. Elucidating the Design Space of Regression-based Diffusion Reinforcement Learning

    Sep 27, 2026Toyota Li, David Zhao, Alan ZhaoReinforcement LearningConstrained RL

    Tencent

  14. DOHF: Online Diffusion Fine-tuning with Doob's hh-transform Guidance

    Sep 25, 2026Zhengyi Guo, Jiayuan Sheng, Wenpin Tang +1Diffusion Model AlignmentDiffusion Model Guidance

  15. AV-GRPO: Modality-Anchored Decoupling Diffusion Reinforcement Learning for Joint Audio-Video Generation

    Sep 24, 2026Zhiyu Xu, Weilong Yan, Yufei Shi +4Audio-Video GenerationAudio-Visual Alignment

    Shanghai AI Laboratory · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · National University of Singapore +2

  16. Informed Masking: Structure-Aware Perturbation for Reinforcement Learning in Diffusion Large Language Models

    Sep 22, 2026Xiaoyi Yu, Enver Sangineto, Pei Fu +6RL for Diffusion ModelsDiffusion Language Models

    Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China · MiLM Plus, Xiaomi Inc., Beijing, China · University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy +1

  17. CanvasAnneal: Curriculum Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Language Models

    Sep 14, 2026Blake Olson, Yuhang Song, Emmett McQuinn +1RL for Language Model ReasoningCurriculum RL

    Google DeepMind

  18. DIA: Denoising Intermediate Advantage for Diffusion Policy Optimization

    Sep 10, 2026Arjun Sohal, Yuchi Zhao, Miroslav Bogdanovic +1RL for RoboticsStep-Level Credit Assignment in RL

    University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada · Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, ON, Canada · Acceleration Consortium, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada +2

  19. LeanGRPO: Eliminating Redundant Recomputation in Diffusion RL

    Sep 3, 2026Sijie Wang, Zhiqiang Tan, Xinrui Yang +1RL for Diffusion ModelsRL Post-Training

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen

  20. Designing Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Models: A Unified Path-Space View

    Aug 14, 2026Yixian Xu, Yuanrui Zhang, Shengjie Luo +2Diffusion Model AlignmentPolicy Gradient Methods

    State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Peking University · ByteDance Seed

  21. RL-Native Distillation: Exploiting Scored Trajectories for Few-Step Image Generation

    Aug 10, 2026Yuhan Li, Fangao Zeng, Sicong Kang +7Diffusion Model DistillationFew-Step Diffusion Sampling

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Taobao & Tmall group of Alibaba

  22. PAST: Prompt-Adaptive Sampling Termination for Efficient Diffusion Model

    Aug 7, 2026Renye Yan, Jikang Cheng, You Wu +4Intrinsic Reward MethodsReinforcement Learning

    Peking University Beijing, China

  23. Explore or Converge? Stage-Guided Per-Step Optimization for Diffusion Models

    Aug 7, 2026Renye Yan, Jikang Cheng, You Wu +4Diffusion Model AlignmentTemporal Credit Assignment

    Peking University Beijing, China · Stanford University Stanford, California, USA

  24. Learning When to Stop: Prefix-Optimal Dynamic Diffusion Policies for Continuous Control

    Aug 5, 2026Rohit Kumar Salla, Manoj Saravanan, Simon StepputtisDiffusion PolicyContinuous Control

    Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

  25. Latent Reward Registers for Diffusion Preference Alignment

    Aug 4, 2026Yuanshen Guan, Zipeng Feng, Chengru Song +2Diffusion Model AlignmentDiffusion Model Guidance

    1Kling Team · University of Science and Technology of China

  26. 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

  27. Learning Sampling Parameters for Diffusion Models

    Jul 26, 2026Arisrei Lim, Yossi GandelsmanDiffusion Model GuidanceDiffusion Model Sampling

    Reve

  28. JAGG: Jacobian-Aggregated Group Gradient for Efficient GRPO Training of Diffusion Models

    Jul 20, 2026Ruiyi Ding, Jie Li, He Kang +3BackpropagationDiffusion Transformer

    1KlingAI Research · University of Science and Technology of China · 2Fudan University +2

  29. Reinforcement Learning: From Algorithms To Foundation Models

    Jul 20, 2026Zihan DingReinforcement LearningRL for Video Generation

    Department of Electrical Computer Engineering, Princeton University

  30. Mask-Aware Policy Gradients for Diffusion Language Models

    Jul 16, 2026Haran Raajesh, Kulin Shah, Adam Klivans +1Masked Diffusion ModelsRL for Language Model Reasoning

    Department of Computer Science The University of Texas at Austin

  31. 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

  32. Read It Back: Pretrained MLLMs Are Zero-Shot Reward Models for Text-to-Image Generation

    Jul 13, 2026Runhui Huang, Qihui Zhang, Zhe Liu +3T2I GenerationMultimodal Reward Modeling

    The University of Hong Kong · Peking University · ByteDance Seed

  33. A Single Diffusion-Policy Controller for Multi-Task Block Pushing with Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Transfer

    Jul 12, 2026Haitong Ma, Haldun Balim, Yang Hu +2Sim-to-Real TransferDiffusion Policy

    1Harvard University. · 2Georgia Institute of Technology.

  34. Reinforcing the Generation Order of Multimodal Masked Diffusion Models

    Jul 9, 2026Yidong Ouyang, Zhe Wang, Sourav Bhabesh +1Text-Image AlignmentRL for Diffusion Models

    University of California, Los Angeles · AGI Foundations for AWS

  35. Expressivity and Statistical Trade-offs in Diffusion Policy Learning

    Jul 8, 2026Viet Vu, Renyuan Xu, Jiacheng Zhang +1Diffusion PolicyRL for Diffusion Models

    Stanford University · Chinese University of Hong Kong · Imperial College London

  36. Selective Timestep Weighting and Advantage-Based Replay for Sample-Efficient Diffusion RLHF

    Jul 8, 2026Eric Zhu, Abhinav Shrivastava, Soumik MukhopadhyayDiffusion Model AlignmentRL for Diffusion Models

    Carnegie Mellon University · University of Maryland, College Park

  37. Self-Improving Diffusion Classifiers with Minority Preference Optimization

    Jul 4, 2026Hyunsoo Kim, Jungmyung Wi, Soobin Um +2Diffusion Model AlignmentLong-Tailed Classification

    1Korea University · 2Kook Min University · 3Kyung Hee University

  38. Adaptive Reparametrized Time for Score-Based Diffusion Sampling

    Jul 2, 2026Yilie Huang, Wenpin Tang, Xun Yu ZhouDiffusion SamplingAdaptive Sampling

    Department of Applied Mathematics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. · Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. · Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and Data Science Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.

  39. PAPA: Online Personalized Active Preference Alignment

    Jul 1, 2026Anindya Sarkar, Nasik Muhammad Nafi, Isaac Lyngaas +2Diffusion Model AlignmentDiffusion Model Fine-Tuning

    Washington University in St. Louis · Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  40. SLIM-RL: Risk-Budgeted Random-Masking RL for Diffusion LLMs Without Trajectory Slicing

    Jun 30, 2026Ruikang Zhao, Zhenting Wang, Han Gao +1Reinforcement LearningRL for Language Model Reasoning

    Technical University of Denmark · MBZUAI Institute of Foundation Models · Iowa State University +1

  41. Diffusion Fine-tuning with Rewarded Moment Matching Distillation

    Jun 29, 2026Alexis Jacq, Guillaume Couairon, Valentin De Bortoli +3Diffusion Model DistillationDiffusion Model Fine-Tuning

    1Google DeepMind

  42. Qwen-Image-2.0-RL Technical Report

    Jun 25, 2026Yixian Xu, Kaiyuan Gao, Yuxiang Chen +25Reward ModelingRL for Diffusion Models

    Equal contribution. · Corresponding author.

  43. SpatialFlow-GRPO: Where Spatial Credit Drives Image Editing

    Jun 25, 2026Yankai Yang, Yancheng Long, Wei Chen +7Reward ModelingGroup Relative Policy Optimization

    Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · Kuaishou Technology

  44. Accelerating Disaggregated RL for Visual Generative LLMs with Diffusion-Based Parallelism and Trainer-Assisted Generation

    Jun 23, 2026Sijie Wang, Zhengyu Qing, Zhiqiang Tan +6Reinforcement LearningDistributed RL

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · Data Science and Analytics Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · Huawei Technologies Ltd.

  45. Scheduling Thoughts: Learning the Order of Thought in Diffusion Language Models

    Jun 22, 2026Jiawei Xu, Minghui Liu, Aakriti Agrawal +2Masked Diffusion ModelsLanguage Model Decoding

    University of Maryland, College Park · University of California, Los Angeles.

  46. Scalable Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Policies via Adjoint Matching

    Jun 21, 2026Serge Thilges, Onur Celik, Denis Blessing +2Diffusion PolicyMaximum Entropy RL

    Autonomous Learning Robots, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

  47. Curvature-Adaptive Consistency Flow Matching: Autonomous Trajectory Optimization via Reinforcement Learning

    Jun 21, 2026Songtao Tian, Guhan Chen, Bohan Li +2Curriculum RLFew-Step Diffusion Sampling

    1Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · 2Huawei Large Model Data Technology Lab, Shenzhen, China

  48. Spotlight: Synergizing Seed Exploration and Spot GPUs for DiT RL Post-Training

    Jun 17, 2026Ruiqi Lai, Dakai An, Wei Gao +6Diffusion TransformerRL for Image Generation

    NTU Singapore · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Alibaba Group

  49. STAR: SpatioTemporal Adaptive Reward Allocation for Text-to-Image RL Post-Training

    Jun 16, 2026Jinjie Shen, Wei Deng, Xian Hu +2Diffusion Model AlignmentCompositional T2I Generation

  50. Trust-Region Diffusion Policies for Massively Parallel On-Policy RL

    Jun 13, 2026Huy Le, Onur Celik, Denis Blessing +6Diffusion PolicyRL for Diffusion Models

    Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence · Autonomous Learning Robots, KIT · University of Texas at Austin +1

  51. Temporal Difference Learning for Diffusion Models

    Jun 13, 2026Qizhen Ying, Yangchen Pan, Victor Adrian Prisacariu +1Few-Step Diffusion SamplingRL for Diffusion Models

    Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom · School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

  52. QPILOTS: Efficient Test-Time Q-Steering for Flow Policies

    Jun 11, 2026Yifan Ruan, Chenyang Cao, Andreas Burger +7Inference-Time OptimizationDiffusion Policy

    University of Toronto · Vector Institute · LG Electronics

  53. DiPOD: Diffusion Policy Optimization without Drifting Apart

    Jun 11, 2026Haozhe Jiang, Haiwen Feng, Pieter Abbeel +3Policy Gradient MethodsRL for Diffusion Models

    UC Berkeley · NVIDIA

  54. A2D2: Fine-Tuning Any-Length Discrete Diffusion for Adaptive Decoding

    Jun 11, 2026Sophia Tang, Yuchen Zhu, Molei Tao +1Diffusion Model Fine-TuningDiffusion Language Model Decoding

    Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania · School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology · Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania

  55. Efficient Reinforcement for Visual-Textual Thinking with Discrete Diffusion Model

    Jun 11, 2026Yoonjeon Kim, Yuhta Takida, Chieh-Hsin Lai +2Multimodal ReasoningRL for Diffusion Models

    KAIST · Sony AI · KAIST & AITRICS +1

  56. Back on Track: Aligning Rewards and States for Reasoning in Diffusion Large Language Models

    Jun 7, 2026Yawen Shao, Jie Xiao, Kai Zhu +6RL for Language Model ReasoningCredit Assignment in RL

    University of Science and Technology of China · Tongyi Lab · Northeastern University

  57. Read the Trace, Steer the Path: Trajectory-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Language Models

    Jun 3, 2026Anant Khandelwal, Manish GuptaRL for Language Model ReasoningCredit Assignment in RL

    Microsoft AI, India

  58. Fine-Tuning Diffusion Models for Molecular Generation via Reinforcement Learning and Fast Sampling

    May 31, 2026Guang Lin, Shikui Tu, Lei XuMolecular OptimizationDiffusion Model Fine-Tuning

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · Guangdong Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy (SZ), Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

  59. Lagrangian Perturbation Diffusion Steering: Latent Reinforcement Learning for Generative Policies

    May 31, 2026Hikmet Simsir, Ozgur S. OguzRobot Policy AdaptationReinforcement Learning

    Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye.

  60. Improving Visual Representation Alignment Generation with GRPO

    May 30, 2026Shentong Mo, Sukmin YunDiffusion Model AlignmentDiffusion Transformer

    Carnegie Mellon University · Hanyang University