# MCGAN: Enhancing GAN Training with Regression-Based Generator Loss

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.17191 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17191/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Improved Training of Wasserstein GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00028/) (2017)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [Spectral Normalization for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05957/) (2018)
- [Convolutional LSTM Network: A Machine Learning Approach for Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04214/) (2015)
- [On Large-Batch Training for Deep Learning: Generalization Gap and Sharp Minima](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04836/) (2016)
- [Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06676/) (2020)
- [Least Squares Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.04076/) (2016)
- [Modeling Tabular data using Conditional GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00503/) (2019)
- [Which Training Methods for GANs do actually Converge?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04406/) (2018)
- [Conditional Image Synthesis With Auxiliary Classifier GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.09585/) (2016)
- [f-GAN: Training Generative Neural Samplers using Variational Divergence Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00709/) (2016)
- [Towards Principled Methods for Training Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04862/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Video Representations using LSTMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.04681/) (2015)
- [Differentiable Augmentation for Data-Efficient GAN Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10738/) (2020)
- [Real-valued (Medical) Time Series Generation with Recurrent Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02633/) (2017)
- [Generative Moment Matching Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02761/) (2015)
- [cGANs with Projection Discriminator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05637/) (2018)
- [Geometric GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02894/) (2017)
- [A Note on the Inception Score](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01973/) (2018)
- [Consistency Regularization for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12027/) (2019)
- [Energy-based Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03126/) (2016)
- [Regularizing Generative Adversarial Networks under Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03310/) (2021)
- [COT-GAN: Generating Sequential Data via Causal Optimal Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08571/) (2020)
- [Sig-Wasserstein GANs for Time Series Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01207/) (2021)
- [Rebooting ACGAN: Auxiliary Classifier GANs with Stable Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01118/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [UCD: Unconditional Discriminator Promotes Nash Equilibrium in GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00624/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have emerged as a powerful tool for generating high-fidelity data. However, the main bottleneck of existing approaches is the lack of supervision on the generator training, which often results in undamped oscillation and unsatisfactory performance. To address this issue, we propose an algorithm called Monte Carlo GAN (MCGAN). This approach, utilizing an innovative generative loss function, termly the regression loss, reformulates the generator training as a regression task and enables the generator training by minimizing the mean squared error between the discriminator's output of real data and the expected discriminator of fake data. We demonstrate the desirable analytic properties of the regression loss, including discriminability and optimality, and show that our method requires a weaker condition on the discriminator for effective generator training. These properties justify the strength of this approach to improve the training stability while retaining the optimality of GAN by leveraging strong supervision of the regression loss. Extensive experiments on diverse datasets, including image data (CIFAR-10/100, FFHQ256, ImageNet, and LSUN Bedroom), time series data (VAR and stock data) and video data, are conducted to demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of our proposed MCGAN. Numerical results show that the proposed MCGAN is versatile in enhancing a variety of backbone GAN models and achieves consistent and significant improvement in terms of quality, accuracy, training stability, and learned latent space.