# GAN-based Matrix Factorization for Recommender Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.08042 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08042/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [InfoGAN: Interpretable Representation Learning by Information Maximizing Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03657/) (2016)
- [StackGAN: Text to Photo-realistic Image Synthesis with Stacked Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03242/) (2016)
- [SeqGAN: Sequence Generative Adversarial Nets with Policy Gradient](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05473/) (2016)
- [NIPS 2016 Tutorial: Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.00160/) (2016)
- [Are We Really Making Much Progress? A Worrying Analysis of Recent Neural Recommendation Approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06902/) (2019)
- [Recent Advances in Autoencoder-Based Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05069/) (2018)
- [GraphGAN: Graph Representation Learning with Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08267/) (2017)
- [Energy-based Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03126/) (2016)
- [CaloGAN: Simulating 3D High Energy Particle Showers in Multi-Layer Electromagnetic Calorimeters with Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.10321/) (2017)
- [IRGAN: A Minimax Game for Unifying Generative and Discriminative Information Retrieval Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10513/) (2017)
- [A Troubling Analysis of Reproducibility and Progress in Recommender Systems Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07698/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Ranking for Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.11001/) (2017)
- [Learning Particle Physics by Example: Location-Aware Generative Adversarial Networks for Physics Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.05927/) (2017)
- [Sequential Recommendation with Self-Attentive Multi-Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10602/) (2020)
- [Artist-driven layering and user's behaviour impact on recommendations in a playlist continuation scenario](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06233/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [PPGenCDR: A Stable and Robust Framework for Privacy-Preserving Cross-Domain Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16163/) (2023)
- [Flow Matching based Sequential Recommender Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16298/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Proposed in 2014, Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) initiated a fresh interest in generative modelling. They immediately achieved state-of-the-art in image synthesis, image-to-image translation, text-to-image generation, image inpainting and have been used in sciences ranging from medicine to high-energy particle physics. Despite their popularity and ability to learn arbitrary distributions, GAN have not been widely applied in recommender systems (RS). Moreover, only few of the techniques that have introduced GAN in RS have employed them directly as a collaborative filtering (CF) model. In this work we propose a new GAN-based approach that learns user and item latent factors in a matrix factorization setting for the generic top-N recommendation problem. Following the vector-wise GAN training approach for RS introduced by CFGAN, we identify 2 unique issues when utilizing GAN for CF. We propose solutions for both of them by using an autoencoder as discriminator and incorporating an additional loss function for the generator. We evaluate our model, GANMF, through well-known datasets in the RS community and show improvements over traditional CF approaches and GAN-based models. Through an ablation study on the components of GANMF we aim to understand the effects of our architectural choices. Finally, we provide a qualitative evaluation of the matrix factorization performance of GANMF.