# ProCreate, Don't Reproduce! Propulsive Energy Diffusion for Creative Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02226 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02226/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 45 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Aug 2024.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [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)
- [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)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Demystifying MMD GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01401/) (2018)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [Variational Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00630/) (2021)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06991/) (2019)
- [Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13188/) (2023)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [LION: Latent Point Diffusion Models for 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06978/) (2022)
- [Universal Guidance for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07121/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Art or Digital Forgery? Investigating Data Replication in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03860/) (2022)
- [The Vendi Score: A Diversity Evaluation Metric for Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02410/) (2022)
- [Inversion-Based Style Transfer with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13203/) (2022)
- [How to Train Your Energy-Based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03288/) (2021)
- [LayoutDiffusion: Controllable Diffusion Model for Layout-to-image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17189/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [SPARKE: Scalable Prompt-Aware Diversity and Novelty Guidance in Diffusion Models via RKE Score](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10173/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Creative Generation on Stable Diffusion-based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23538/) (2025)
- [Boost-and-Skip: A Simple Guidance-Free Diffusion for Minority Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06516/) (2025)
- [Distribution-Conditional Generation: From Class Distribution to Creative Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03667/) (2025)
- [Context Tuning for In-Context Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04221/) (2025)
- [DAK-UCB: Diversity-Aware Prompt Routing for LLMs and Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23140/) (2026)
- [GuessBench: Sensemaking Multimodal Creativity in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00814/) (2025)
- [A Universal Avoidance Method for Diverse Multi-branch Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17323/) (2026)
- [HyperThink: Text-to-Parameter Hypernetworks for Efficient Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03039/) (2026)
- [Wildfire Spread Scenarios: Increasing Sample Diversity of Segmentation Diffusion Models with Training-Free Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20188/) (2026)
- [Diverse Sampling in Diffusion Models with Marginal Preserving Particle Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06553/) (2026)
- [Seeking the Unfamiliar but Memorable: Conceptual Creativity as Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16477/) (2026)
- [Self-Creative Text-to-Object Generation using Semantic-Aware Spatial Weighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19554/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we propose ProCreate, a simple and easy-to-implement method to improve sample diversity and creativity of diffusion-based image generative models and to prevent training data reproduction. ProCreate operates on a set of reference images and actively propels the generated image embedding away from the reference embeddings during the generation process. We propose FSCG-8 (Few-Shot Creative Generation 8), a few-shot creative generation dataset on eight different categories -- encompassing different concepts, styles, and settings -- in which ProCreate achieves the highest sample diversity and fidelity. Furthermore, we show that ProCreate is effective at preventing replicating training data in a large-scale evaluation using training text prompts. Code and FSCG-8 are available at https://github.com/Agentic-Learning-AI-Lab/procreate-diffusion-public. The project page is available at https://procreate-diffusion.github.io.