# Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.00796 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1,114 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 267 of its 394 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2022.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion foundations and sampling](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-foundations-and-sampling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 267)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [OPT: Open Pre-trained Transformer Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01068/) (2022)
- [Neural Message Passing for Quantum Chemistry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01212/) (2017)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 1114)

- [ModelScope Text-to-Video Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06571/) (2023)
- [Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Large Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14608/) (2024)
- [Sampling is as easy as learning the score: theory for diffusion models with minimal data assumptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11215/) (2022)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Training Dynamics of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02696/) (2023)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for AI-Generated Content: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19473/) (2024)
- [I2VGen-XL: High-Quality Image-to-Video Synthesis via Cascaded Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04145/) (2023)
- [Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06135/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models for Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07804/) (2022)
- [Post-training Quantization on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15736/) (2022)
- [Text-to-image Diffusion Models in Generative AI: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07909/) (2023)
- [DriveDreamer: Towards Real-world-driven World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09777/) (2023)
- [LayoutDiffusion: Controllable Diffusion Model for Layout-to-image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17189/) (2023)
- [What the DAAM: Interpreting Stable Diffusion Using Cross Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04885/) (2022)
- [TextDiffuser: Diffusion Models as Text Painters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10855/) (2023)
- [Mastering Text-to-Image Diffusion: Recaptioning, Planning, and Generating with Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11708/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17525/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10647/) (2023)
- [Image Restoration with Mean-Reverting Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11699/) (2023)
- [Holistic Evaluation of Text-To-Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04287/) (2023)
- [A Reparameterized Discrete Diffusion Model for Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05737/) (2023)
- [Dynamical Regimes of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18491/) (2024)
- [Rich Human Feedback for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10240/) (2023)
- [Towards Understanding Cross and Self-Attention in Stable Diffusion for Text-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03431/) (2024)
- [Unique3D: High-Quality and Efficient 3D Mesh Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20343/) (2024)
- [Reliable and Efficient Concept Erasure of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12383/) (2024)
- [CADS: Unleashing the Diversity of Diffusion Models through Condition-Annealed Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17347/) (2023)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) 2.0: A Manifesto of Open Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19775/) (2023)
- [AEROBLADE: Training-Free Detection of Latent Diffusion Images Using Autoencoder Reconstruction Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17879/) (2024)
- [Vision-Language Pre-training: Basics, Recent Advances, and Future Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09263/) (2022)
- [Policy Representation via Diffusion Probability Model for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13122/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models have emerged as a powerful new family of deep generative models with record-breaking performance in many applications, including image synthesis, video generation, and molecule design. In this survey, we provide an overview of the rapidly expanding body of work on diffusion models, categorizing the research into three key areas: efficient sampling, improved likelihood estimation, and handling data with special structures. We also discuss the potential for combining diffusion models with other generative models for enhanced results. We further review the wide-ranging applications of diffusion models in fields spanning from computer vision, natural language generation, temporal data modeling, to interdisciplinary applications in other scientific disciplines. This survey aims to provide a contextualized, in-depth look at the state of diffusion models, identifying the key areas of focus and pointing to potential areas for further exploration. Github: https://github.com/YangLing0818/Diffusion-Models-Papers-Survey-Taxonomy.