Causal-Story: Local Causal Attention Utilizing Parameter-Efficient Tuning For Visual Story Synthesis
On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing
Abstract (arXiv)
The excellent text-to-image synthesis capability of diffusion models has driven progress in synthesizing coherent visual stories. The current state-of-the-art method combines the features of historical captions, historical frames, and the current captions as conditions for generating the current frame. However, this method treats each historical frame and caption as the same contribution. It connects them in order with equal weights, ignoring that not all historical conditions are associated with the generation of the current frame. To address this issue, we propose Causal-Story. This model incorporates a local causal attention mechanism that considers the causal relationship between previous captions, frames, and current captions. By assigning weights based on this relationship, Causal-Story generates the current frame, thereby improving the global consistency of story generation. We evaluated our model on the PororoSV and FlintstonesSV datasets and obtained state-of-the-art FID scores, and the generated frames also demonstrate better storytelling in visuals.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 18 of its 21 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Sep 2023.
Builds on
18 of 21 references.
Closest ancestors · 1
Same direction, newest first
Other references · 17
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
- 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,847
- 2022Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,627
- 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,712
- 2022BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generationcited by 4,322
- 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,288
- 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,761
- 2018StoryGAN: A Sequential Conditional GAN for Story Visualizationcited by 138
- 2022StoryDALL-E: Adapting Pretrained Text-to-Image Transformers for Story Continuationcited by 74
5 more
- 2018Imagine This! Scripts to Compositions to Videoscited by 54
- 2021Integrating Visuospatial, Linguistic and Commonsense Structure into Story Visualizationcited by 52
- 2021Improving Generation and Evaluation of Visual Stories via Semantic Consistencycited by 43
- 2022Character-Centric Story Visualization via Visual Planning and Token Alignmentcited by 33
- 2022Word-Level Fine-Grained Story Visualizationcited by 23
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 4; 2025: 1; 2026: 3.
9 papers.
- 2024StoryImager: A Unified and Efficient Framework for Coherent Story Visualization and Completioncited by 20
- 2024Replication in Visual Diffusion Models: A Survey and Outlookcited by 11
- 2023CogCartoon: Towards Practical Story Visualizationcited by 8
- 2024ContextualStory: Consistent Visual Storytelling with Spatially-Enhanced and Storyline Contextcited by 8
- 2025ViSTA: Visual Storytelling using Multi-modal Adapters for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 3
- 2024Masked Generative Story Transformer with Character Guidance and Caption Augmentationcited by 2
- 2026Diff2DGS: Reliable Reconstruction of Occluded Surgical Scenes via 2D Gaussian Splattingcited by 2
- 2026FreeStory: Training-Free Character Consistency for Free-Form Visual Storytellingcited by 2
- 2026Sidecar: Training-Free Semantic Reuse for Character-Consistent Free-form Visual Storytellingcited by 0
- 2026Sidecar: Training-Free Semantic Reuse for Character-Consistent Free-form Visual Storytelling27 Aug 2026
- 2026FreeStory: Training-Free Character Consistency for Free-Form Visual Storytelling23 Jun 2026
- 2026Diff2DGS: Reliable Reconstruction of Occluded Surgical Scenes via 2D Gaussian Splatting20 Feb 2026
- 2025ViSTA: Visual Storytelling using Multi-modal Adapters for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models13 Jun 2025
- 2024ContextualStory: Consistent Visual Storytelling with Spatially-Enhanced and Storyline Context13 Jul 2024
- 2024Replication in Visual Diffusion Models: A Survey and Outlook7 Jul 2024
- 2024StoryImager: A Unified and Efficient Framework for Coherent Story Visualization and Completion9 Apr 2024
- 2024Masked Generative Story Transformer with Character Guidance and Caption Augmentation13 Mar 2024
- 2023CogCartoon: Towards Practical Story Visualization17 Dec 2023
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2023Improved Visual Story Generation with Adaptive Context Modeling
- 2024Boosting Consistency in Story Visualization with Rich-Contextual Conditional Diffusion Models
- 2025Latent Beam Diffusion Models for Generating Visual Sequences
- 2025Storybooth: Training-free Multi-Subject Consistency for Improved Visual Storytelling
- 2024StoryDiffusion: Consistent Self-Attention for Long-Range Image and Video Generation
- 2025StoryMem: Multi-shot Long Video Storytelling with Memory
- 2026DreamShot: Personalized Storyboard Synthesis with Video Diffusion Prior
- 2023Intelligent Grimm -- Open-ended Visual Storytelling via Latent Diffusion Models