mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Your GAN is Secretly an Energy-based Model and You Should use Discriminator Driven Latent Sampling

arXiv 2003.06060 ↗First posted 12 Mar 2020cs.LG cs.AI stat.MLcited by 71

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Abstract (arXiv)

We show that the sum of the implicit generator log-density log pg of a GAN with the logit score of the discriminator defines an energy function which yields the true data density when the generator is imperfect but the discriminator is optimal, thus making it possible to improve on the typical generator (with implicit density pg). To make that practical, we show that sampling from this modified density can be achieved by sampling in latent space according to an energy-based model induced by the sum of the latent prior log-density and the discriminator output score. This can be achieved by running a Langevin MCMC in latent space and then applying the generator function, which we call Discriminator Driven Latent Sampling~(DDLS). We show that DDLS is highly efficient compared to previous methods which work in the high-dimensional pixel space and can be applied to improve on previously trained GANs of many types. We evaluate DDLS on both synthetic and real-world datasets qualitatively and quantitatively. On CIFAR-10, DDLS substantially improves the Inception Score of an off-the-shelf pre-trained SN-GAN~citepsngan from 8.22 to 9.09 which is even comparable to the class-conditional BigGAN~citepbiggan model. This achieves a new state-of-the-art in unconditional image synthesis setting without introducing extra parameters or additional training.

Key facts. Cited by 71 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2020.

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 19; 2022: 18; 2023: 15; 2024: 6; 2025: 13.

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  1. 2022Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applicationscited by 1,107
  2. 2021Score-based Generative Modeling in Latent Spacecited by 634
  3. 2021Deep Generative Modelling: A Comparative Review of VAEs, GANs, Normalizing Flows, Energy-Based and Autoregressive Modelscited by 251
  4. 2023Self-Consuming Generative Models Go MADcited by 239
  5. 2022DiffuseVAE: Efficient, Controllable and High-Fidelity Generation from Low-Dimensional Latentscited by 103
  6. 2022Refining Generative Process with Discriminator Guidance in Score-based Diffusion Modelscited by 98
  7. 2021Controllable and Compositional Generation with Latent-Space Energy-Based Modelscited by 64
  8. 2021Rebooting ACGAN: Auxiliary Classifier GANs with Stable Trainingcited by 57
  9. 2021Energy-Based Open-World Uncertainty Modeling for Confidence Calibrationcited by 46
  10. 2021Training GANs with Stronger Augmentations via Contrastive Discriminatorcited by 45
  11. 2022GATSBI: Generative Adversarial Training for Simulation-Based Inferencecited by 36
  12. 2022Unifying Generative Models with GFlowNets and Beyondcited by 24
38 more
  1. 2021MaGNET: Uniform Sampling from Deep Generative Network Manifolds Without Retrainingcited by 23
  2. 2021Local-Global MCMC kernels: the best of both worldscited by 21
  3. 2022Polarity Sampling: Quality and Diversity Control of Pre-Trained Generative Networks via Singular Valuescited by 21
  4. 2023Unifying GANs and Score-Based Diffusion as Generative Particle Modelscited by 21
  5. 2023On Sampling with Approximate Transport Mapscited by 20
  6. 2023Complexity Matters: Rethinking the Latent Space for Generative Modelingcited by 19
  7. 2023Learning Energy-Based Models by Cooperative Diffusion Recovery Likelihoodcited by 19
  8. 2024Deep MMD Gradient Flow without adversarial trainingcited by 18
  9. 2025Outsourced diffusion sampling: Efficient posterior inference in latent spaces of generative modelscited by 16
  10. 2022Learning Probabilistic Models from Generator Latent Spaces with Hat EBMcited by 11
  11. 2021Latent Space Refinement for Deep Generative Modelscited by 10
  12. 2021Bounds all around: training energy-based models with bidirectional boundscited by 10
  13. 2021BIGRoC: Boosting Image Generation via a Robust Classifiercited by 9
  14. 2025Preference Optimization by Estimating the Ratio of the Data Distributioncited by 9
  15. 2025DiffRatio: Training One-Step Diffusion Models Without Teacher Supervisioncited by 8
  16. 2022Robust and Controllable Object-Centric Learning through Energy-based Modelscited by 7
  17. 2024Bring Metric Functions into Diffusion Modelscited by 7
  18. 2021Latent reweighting, an almost free improvement for GANscited by 6
  19. 2022Bi-level Doubly Variational Learning for Energy-based Latent Variable Modelscited by 6
  20. 2023Don't be so negative! Score-based Generative Modeling with Oracle-assisted Guidancecited by 6
  21. 2021Efficient Subsampling of Realistic Images From GANs Conditional on a Class or a Continuous Variablecited by 5
  22. 2022Energy-Based Models for Functional Data using Path Measure Tiltingcited by 5
  23. 2022Neural Implicit Manifold Learning for Topology-Aware Density Estimationcited by 5
  24. 2023ELSA -- Enhanced latent spaces for improved collider simulationscited by 5
  25. 2023Discriminator Guidance for Autoregressive Diffusion Modelscited by 5
  26. 2023Optimal Budgeted Rejection Sampling for Generative Modelscited by 5
  27. 2024Hitchhiker's guide on the relation of Energy-Based Models with other generative models, sampling and statistical physics: a comprehensive reviewcited by 5
  28. 2022Learning Representation from Neural Fisher Kernel with Low-rank Approximationcited by 4
  29. 2022Out-of-Distribution Detection with Class Ratio Estimationcited by 4
  30. 2022Your Autoregressive Generative Model Can be Better If You Treat It as an Energy-Based Onecited by 4
  31. 2022Consistent Training via Energy-Based GFlowNets for Modeling Discrete Joint Distributionscited by 4
  32. 2023Morse Neural Networks for Uncertainty Quantificationcited by 4
  33. 2023Efficient Multimodal Sampling via Tempered Distribution Flowcited by 3
  34. 2021EBMs Trained with Maximum Likelihood are Generator Models Trained with a Self-adverserial Losscited by 2
  35. 2021Learning High-Dimensional Distributions with Latent Neural Fokker-Planck Kernelscited by 2
  36. 2021Conjugate Energy-Based Modelscited by 2
  37. 2021Reparameterized Sampling for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 2
  38. 2023CoopInit: Initializing Generative Adversarial Networks via Cooperative Learningcited by 2

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