mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis

arXiv 2307.01952 ↗First posted 4 Jul 2023cs.CV cs.AIcited by 4,290

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion foundations and sampling

Abstract (arXiv)

We present SDXL, a latent diffusion model for text-to-image synthesis. Compared to previous versions of Stable Diffusion, SDXL leverages a three times larger UNet backbone: The increase of model parameters is mainly due to more attention blocks and a larger cross-attention context as SDXL uses a second text encoder. We design multiple novel conditioning schemes and train SDXL on multiple aspect ratios. We also introduce a refinement model which is used to improve the visual fidelity of samples generated by SDXL using a post-hoc image-to-image technique. We demonstrate that SDXL shows drastically improved performance compared the previous versions of Stable Diffusion and achieves results competitive with those of black-box state-of-the-art image generators. In the spirit of promoting open research and fostering transparency in large model training and evaluation, we provide access to code and model weights at https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models

Key facts. Cited by 4,290 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 40 of its 57 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Jul 2023.

Builds on

40 of 57 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Common Diffusion Noise Schedules and Sample Steps are Flawed15 May
  2. 2023TRACT: Denoising Diffusion Models with Transitive Closure Time-Distillation7 Mar
  3. 2023Simple diffusion: End-to-end diffusion for high resolution images26 Jan
  4. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers19 Dec
  5. 2022On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models6 Oct
  6. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance26 Jul
  7. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models1 Jun
  8. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models20 Dec
  9. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis11 May
  10. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations26 Nov
  11. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models6 Oct
  12. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models19 Jun

Other references · 28

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,160
  3. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
  4. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  5. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
  6. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,539
  7. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,322
  8. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  9. 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,276
  10. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 3,595
  11. 2016Improved Techniques for Training GANscited by 2,938
  12. 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
16 more
  1. 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,903
  2. 2022Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Modelscited by 1,765
  3. 2022Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Datacited by 1,725
  4. 2023Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 1,465
  5. 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,287
  6. 2023Pick-a-Pic: An Open Dataset of User Preferences for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 950
  7. 2022eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoiserscited by 921
  8. 2023Structure and Content-Guided Video Synthesis with Diffusion Modelscited by 589
  9. 2021ByT5: Towards a token-free future with pre-trained byte-to-byte modelscited by 504
  10. 2022Training-Free Structured Diffusion Guidance for Compositional Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 386
  11. 2023Make-An-Audio: Text-To-Audio Generation with Prompt-Enhanced Diffusion Modelscited by 323
  12. 2023SnapFusion: Text-to-Image Diffusion Model on Mobile Devices within Two Secondscited by 227
  13. 2022Character-Aware Models Improve Visual Text Renderingcited by 90
  14. 2023DiffCLIP: Leveraging Stable Diffusion for Language Grounded 3D Classificationcited by 23
  15. 2023Boosting GUI Prototyping with Diffusion Modelscited by 10
  16. 2022Evaluating a Synthetic Image Dataset Generated with Stable Diffusioncited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 208; 2024: 1267; 2025: 1723; 2026: 1092.

4,290 papers.

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  1. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
  2. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasetscited by 2,526
  3. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformercited by 2,198
  4. 2023VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Modelscited by 1,755
  5. 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,597
  6. 2023AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuningcited by 1,418
  7. 2023One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillationcited by 978
  8. 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 973
  9. 2023MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generationcited by 928
  10. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 855
  11. 2023PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 854
  12. 2023Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objectscited by 767
38 more
  1. 2023Diffusion Model Alignment Using Direct Preference Optimizationcited by 767
  2. 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 761
  3. 2024Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generationcited by 760
  4. 2023Adversarial Diffusion Distillationcited by 741
  5. 2024DoRA: Weight-Decomposed Low-Rank Adaptationcited by 740
  6. 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 734
  7. 2023The Dawn of LMMs: Preliminary Explorations with GPT-4V(ision)cited by 677
  8. 2024Representation Alignment for Generation: Training Diffusion Transformers Is Easier Than You Thinkcited by 666
  9. 2024Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesiscited by 648
  10. 2024Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for Allcited by 637
  11. 2023NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLMcited by 610
  12. 2025Flow-GRPO: Training Flow Matching Models via Online RLcited by 605
  13. 2024VideoCrafter2: Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Modelscited by 568
  14. 2024LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusioncited by 549
  15. 2023VideoCrafter1: Open Diffusion Models for High-Quality Video Generationcited by 530
  16. 2024BLINK: Multimodal Large Language Models Can See but Not Perceivecited by 529
  17. 2023Zero123++: a Single Image to Consistent Multi-view Diffusion Base Modelcited by 516
  18. 2023VideoPoet: A Large Language Model for Zero-Shot Video Generationcited by 479
  19. 2024Transfusion: Predict the Next Token and Diffuse Images with One Multi-Modal Modelcited by 468
  20. 2024Sora: A Review on Background, Technology, Limitations, and Opportunities of Large Vision Modelscited by 467
  21. 2024ELLA: Equip Diffusion Models with LLM for Enhanced Semantic Alignmentcited by 455
  22. 2024CameraCtrl: Enabling Camera Control for Text-to-Video Generationcited by 448
  23. 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 447
  24. 2023Generative Multimodal Models are In-Context Learnerscited by 446
  25. 2024CLAY: A Controllable Large-scale Generative Model for Creating High-quality 3D Assetscited by 444
  26. 2024InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Secondscited by 431
  27. 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editingcited by 417
  28. 2024OmniGen: Unified Image Generationcited by 388
  29. 2025DanceGRPO: Unleashing GRPO on Visual Generationcited by 388
  30. 2023InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generationcited by 387
  31. 2023Instant3D: Fast Text-to-3D with Sparse-View Generation and Large Reconstruction Modelcited by 376
  32. 2025Reconstruction vs. Generation: Taming Optimization Dilemma in Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 376
  33. 2024Mini-Gemini: Mining the Potential of Multi-modality Vision Language Modelscited by 361
  34. 2024GS-LRM: Large Reconstruction Model for 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 344
  35. 2023I2VGen-XL: High-Quality Image-to-Video Synthesis via Cascaded Diffusion Modelscited by 343
  36. 2025Hunyuan3D 2.0: Scaling Diffusion Models for High Resolution Textured 3D Assets Generationcited by 342
  37. 2024Vista: A Generalizable Driving World Model with High Fidelity and Versatile Controllabilitycited by 337
  38. 2024OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformercited by 334

50 most cited of 4,290 All 4,290 (JSON)

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  1. 2023Text-driven Visual Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Prior
  2. 2024Enhancing Semantic Fidelity in Text-to-Image Synthesis: Attention Regulation in Diffusion Models
  3. 2025Boosting Generative Image Modeling via Joint Image-Feature Synthesis
  4. 2024Progressive Knowledge Distillation Of Stable Diffusion XL Using Layer Level Loss
  5. 2023Wuerstchen: An Efficient Architecture for Large-Scale Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
  6. 2023Training-free Diffusion Model Adaptation for Variable-Sized Text-to-Image Synthesis
  7. 2025Compositional Discrete Latent Code for High Fidelity, Productive Diffusion Models
  8. 2026Abra: Scaling Diffusion Image Training