# The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis in Denoising: Towards Semantic-Driven Initialization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.08872 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08872/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 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 41 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Dec 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [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)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03635/) (2018)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)
- [Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14818/) (2021)
- [GLIGEN: Open-Set Grounded Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07093/) (2023)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13290/) (2021)
- [DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02711/) (2021)
- [Compositional Visual Generation with Composable Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01714/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Scene: Scene-Based Text-to-Image Generation with Human Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13131/) (2022)
- [Training-Free Structured Diffusion Guidance for Compositional Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05032/) (2022)
- [Composer: Creative and Controllable Image Synthesis with Composable Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09778/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Steering Your Diffusion Policy with Latent Space Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15799/) (2025)
- [A Noise is Worth Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03895/) (2024)
- [Zigzag Diffusion Sampling: Diffusion Models Can Self-Improve via Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10891/) (2024)
- [Action-to-Action Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07322/) (2026)
- [FreqPrior: Improving Video Diffusion Models with Frequency Filtering Gaussian Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03496/) (2025)
- [Physics-Informed Distillation of Diffusion Models for PDE-Constrained Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22391/) (2025)
- [Training-Free Sketch-Guided Diffusion with Latent Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00313/) (2024)
- [Layer-wise Instance Binding for Regional and Occlusion Control in Text-to-Image Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05769/) (2026)
- [You've Got a Golden Ticket: Improving Generative Robot Policies With A Single Noise Vector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15757/) (2026)
- [Lagrangian Perturbation Diffusion Steering: Latent Reinforcement Learning for Generative Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01151/) (2026)
- [NoiseController: Towards Consistent Multi-view Video Generation via Noise Decomposition and Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18448/) (2025)
- [LORE: Latent Optimization for Precise Semantic Control in Rectified Flow-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03144/) (2025)
- [COT-FM: Cluster-wise Optimal Transport Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13395/) (2026)
- [SAGA: Learning Signal-Aligned Distributions for Improved Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13866/) (2025)
- [Demystifying Numerosity in Diffusion Models -- Limitations and Remedies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11117/) (2025)
- [Where Should Action Generation Begin? A Learnable Source Prior for Generative Robot Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17408/) (2026)
- [LGTM: Training-Free Light-Guided Text-to-Image Diffusion Model via Initial Noise Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24086/) (2026)
- [Z2-Sampling: Zero-Cost Zigzag Trajectories for Semantic Alignment in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23536/) (2026)
- [LENS: Low-Frequency Eigen Noise Shaping for Efficient Diffusion Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07253/) (2026)
- [Retrieving and Refining Winning Noise Tickets for Diffusion-Based Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06843/) (2026)
- [MotionSpaceFlow: Representation-Aware Flow Matching in Direct Motion Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34190/) (2026)
- [Weeding Out Bad Seeds: Initial-Noise-Robust Unlearning for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37537/) (2026)
- [Learning Conditional Source Distribution via Flow Reversal for Temporal Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05349/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-image diffusion models allow users control over the content of generated images. Still, text-to-image generation occasionally leads to generation failure requiring users to generate dozens of images under the same text prompt before they obtain a satisfying result. We formulate the lottery ticket hypothesis in denoising: randomly initialized Gaussian noise images contain special pixel blocks (winning tickets) that naturally tend to be denoised into specific content independently. The generation failure in standard text-to-image synthesis is caused by the gap between optimal and actual spatial distribution of winning tickets in initial noisy images. To this end, we implement semantic-driven initial image construction creating initial noise from known winning tickets for each concept mentioned in the prompt. We conduct a series of experiments that verify the properties of winning tickets and demonstrate their generalizability across images and prompts. Our results show that aggregating winning tickets into the initial noise image effectively induce the model to generate the specified object at the corresponding location. Project Page: https://ut-mao.github.io/noise.github.io