mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Can the Transformer Be Used as a Drop-in Replacement for RNNs in Text-Generating GANs?

arXiv 2108.12275 ↗First posted 26 Aug 2021cs.LG cs.CLcited by 2

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Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper we address the problem of fine-tuned text generation with a limited computational budget. For that, we use a well-performing text generative adversarial network (GAN) architecture - Diversity-Promoting GAN (DPGAN), and attempted a drop-in replacement of the LSTM layer with a self-attention-based Transformer layer in order to leverage their efficiency. The resulting Self-Attention DPGAN (SADPGAN) was evaluated for performance, quality and diversity of generated text and stability. Computational experiments suggested that a transformer architecture is unable to drop-in replace the LSTM layer, under-performing during the pre-training phase and undergoing a complete mode collapse during the GAN tuning phase. Our results suggest that the transformer architecture need to be adapted before it can be used as a replacement for RNNs in text-generating GANs.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 50 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Aug 2021.

Builds on

34 of 50 references.

References · 34

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22 more
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