Training-Free Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Model
On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing
Abstract (arXiv)
Text-guided image editing is an essential task that enables users to modify images through natural language descriptions. Recent advances in diffusion models and rectified flows have significantly improved editing quality, primarily relying on inversion techniques to extract structured noise from input images. However, inaccuracies in inversion can propagate errors, leading to unintended modifications and compromising fidelity. Moreover, even with perfect inversion, the entanglement between textual prompts and image features often results in global changes when only local edits are intended. To address these challenges, we propose a novel text-guided image editing framework based on VAR (Visual AutoRegressive modeling), which eliminates the need for explicit inversion while ensuring precise and controlled modifications. Our method introduces a caching mechanism that stores token indices and probability distributions from the original image, capturing the relationship between the source prompt and the image. Using this cache, we design an adaptive fine-grained masking strategy that dynamically identifies and constrains modifications to relevant regions, preventing unintended changes. A token reassembling approach further refines the editing process, enhancing diversity, fidelity, and control. Our framework operates in a training-free manner and achieves high-fidelity editing with faster inference speeds, processing a 1K resolution image in as fast as 1.2 seconds. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves performance comparable to, or even surpassing, existing diffusion- and rectified flow-based approaches in both quantitative metrics and visual quality. The code will be released.
Key facts. Cited by 21 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 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2025.
Builds on
41 of 45 references.
Closest ancestors · 17
Same direction, newest first
- 2024Oscillation Inversion: Understand the structure of Large Flow Model through the Lens of Inversion Method17 Nov
- 2024Taming Rectified Flow for Inversion and Editing7 Nov
- 2024DiT4Edit: Diffusion Transformer for Image Editing5 Nov
- 2024Schedule Your Edit: A Simple yet Effective Diffusion Noise Schedule for Image Editing24 Oct
- 2024HART: Efficient Visual Generation with Hybrid Autoregressive Transformer14 Oct
- 2024Semantic Image Inversion and Editing using Rectified Stochastic Differential Equations14 Oct
- 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Need27 Sep
- 2024Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction3 Apr
- 2023Inversion-Free Image Editing with Natural Language7 Dec
- 2023LEDITS++: Limitless Image Editing using Text-to-Image Models28 Nov
- 2023Direct Inversion: Boosting Diffusion-based Editing with 3 Lines of Code2 Oct
- 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions17 Nov
5 more
- 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models17 Nov
- 2022eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers2 Nov
- 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models17 Oct
- 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr
- 2021Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images29 Nov
Other references · 24
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,177
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
- 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,255
- 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,968
- 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,712
- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
- 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,253
- 2022Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Modelscited by 3,024
- 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,431
12 more
- 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,245
- 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,937
- 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,295
- 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 906
- 2021Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 774
- 2023MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editingcited by 727
- 2023Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translationcited by 505
- 2023VideoPoet: A Large Language Model for Zero-Shot Video Generationcited by 492
- 2024Infinity: Scaling Bitwise AutoRegressive Modeling for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 304
- 2021GODIVA: Generating Open-DomaIn Videos from nAtural Descriptionscited by 256
- 2022Splicing ViT Features for Semantic Appearance Transfercited by 209
- 2024Image and Video Tokenization with Binary Spherical Quantizationcited by 112
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 7; 2026: 14.
21 papers.
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- 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editingcited by 429
- 2025Visual Autoregressive Modeling for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 22
- 2025Towards Better & Faster Autoregressive Image Generation: From the Perspective of Entropycited by 12
- 2026ScaleMoGen: Autoregressive Next-Scale Prediction for Human Motion Generationcited by 4
- 2026RewardFlow: Generate Images by Optimizing What You Rewardcited by 3
- 2025InstructAttribute: Fine-grained Object Attributes editing with Instructioncited by 2
- 2025Markovian Scale Prediction: A New Era of Visual Autoregressive Generationcited by 2
- 2026Adaptive Visual Autoregressive Acceleration via Dual-Linkage Entropy Analysiscited by 1
- 2026Rethinking Structure Preservation in Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 1
- 2026Prompt-Guided Image Editing with Masked Logit Nudging in Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 1
- 2025Mastering Regional 3DGS: Locating, Initializing, and Editing with Diverse 2D Priorscited by 0
- 2025DiverseVAR: Balancing Diversity and Quality of Next-Scale Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 0
9 more
- 2026Edit the Bits, Diff the Codes: Bitwise Residual Editing for Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 0
- 2026ScaleErasure: Inference-Time Minimal Intervention for Precise Concept Erasure in Next-Scale Autoregressive Image Generationcited by 0
- 2026UniGen-AR: Unifying Visual Generation with Auto-Regressive Modelingcited by 0
- 2026Instruction-based Image Editing: A Survey on Data, Models, Evaluation, and Applicationscited by 0
- 2026SynVAR: Synergizing Spatial and Semantic Alignment in Visual Autoregressive Modelcited by 0
- 2026Model the Edit, Not the Image: Visual Autoregressive Editing from a Source-Centric Perspectivecited by 0
- 2026Attribute Token Arithmetic: Disentangled and Continuous Semantic Control for Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 0
- 2026Refinement Is Inherently Editable: Training-Free Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Generative Refinement Networkcited by 0
- 2026Edit-VAR: Taming Visual Autoregressive Model for Precise Video Editingcited by 0
- 2026Edit-VAR: Taming Visual Autoregressive Model for Precise Video Editing18 Sep 2026
- 2026Refinement Is Inherently Editable: Training-Free Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Generative Refinement Network17 Sep 2026
- 2026Attribute Token Arithmetic: Disentangled and Continuous Semantic Control for Visual Autoregressive Models28 Aug 2026
- 2026Model the Edit, Not the Image: Visual Autoregressive Editing from a Source-Centric Perspective10 Aug 2026
- 2026SynVAR: Synergizing Spatial and Semantic Alignment in Visual Autoregressive Model8 Aug 2026
- 2026Instruction-based Image Editing: A Survey on Data, Models, Evaluation, and Applications28 Jul 2026
- 2026UniGen-AR: Unifying Visual Generation with Auto-Regressive Modeling27 Jul 2026
- 2026ScaleErasure: Inference-Time Minimal Intervention for Precise Concept Erasure in Next-Scale Autoregressive Image Generation28 Jun 2026
- 2026Edit the Bits, Diff the Codes: Bitwise Residual Editing for Visual Autoregressive Models11 Jun 2026
- 2026ScaleMoGen: Autoregressive Next-Scale Prediction for Human Motion Generation12 May 2026
- 2026Prompt-Guided Image Editing with Masked Logit Nudging in Visual Autoregressive Models16 Apr 2026
- 2026RewardFlow: Generate Images by Optimizing What You Reward9 Apr 2026
9 more
- 2026Rethinking Structure Preservation in Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Models30 Mar 2026
- 2026Adaptive Visual Autoregressive Acceleration via Dual-Linkage Entropy Analysis1 Feb 2026
- 2025Markovian Scale Prediction: A New Era of Visual Autoregressive Generation28 Nov 2025
- 2025DiverseVAR: Balancing Diversity and Quality of Next-Scale Visual Autoregressive Models26 Nov 2025
- 2025Towards Better & Faster Autoregressive Image Generation: From the Perspective of Entropy10 Oct 2025
- 2025Visual Autoregressive Modeling for Instruction-Guided Image Editing21 Aug 2025
- 2025Mastering Regional 3DGS: Locating, Initializing, and Editing with Diverse 2D Priors7 Jul 2025
- 2025InstructAttribute: Fine-grained Object Attributes editing with Instruction1 May 2025
- 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editing24 Apr 2025
- 2025Visual Autoregressive Modeling for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 22
- 2026RewardFlow: Generate Images by Optimizing What You Rewardcited by 3
- 2025InstructAttribute: Fine-grained Object Attributes editing with Instructioncited by 2
- 2025DiverseVAR: Balancing Diversity and Quality of Next-Scale Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 0
- 2026RewardFlow: Generate Images by Optimizing What You Reward9 Apr 2026
- 2025DiverseVAR: Balancing Diversity and Quality of Next-Scale Visual Autoregressive Models26 Nov 2025
- 2025Visual Autoregressive Modeling for Instruction-Guided Image Editing21 Aug 2025
- 2025InstructAttribute: Fine-grained Object Attributes editing with Instruction1 May 2025
- 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editingcited by 429
- 2025Towards Better & Faster Autoregressive Image Generation: From the Perspective of Entropycited by 12
- 2026ScaleMoGen: Autoregressive Next-Scale Prediction for Human Motion Generationcited by 4
- 2025Markovian Scale Prediction: A New Era of Visual Autoregressive Generationcited by 2
- 2026Rethinking Structure Preservation in Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 1
- 2026Prompt-Guided Image Editing with Masked Logit Nudging in Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 1
- 2025Mastering Regional 3DGS: Locating, Initializing, and Editing with Diverse 2D Priorscited by 0
- 2026Edit the Bits, Diff the Codes: Bitwise Residual Editing for Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 0
- 2026ScaleErasure: Inference-Time Minimal Intervention for Precise Concept Erasure in Next-Scale Autoregressive Image Generationcited by 0
- 2026UniGen-AR: Unifying Visual Generation with Auto-Regressive Modelingcited by 0
- 2026Instruction-based Image Editing: A Survey on Data, Models, Evaluation, and Applicationscited by 0
- 2026SynVAR: Synergizing Spatial and Semantic Alignment in Visual Autoregressive Modelcited by 0
12 most cited of 16 All 16 (JSON)
- 2026Edit-VAR: Taming Visual Autoregressive Model for Precise Video Editing18 Sep 2026
- 2026Refinement Is Inherently Editable: Training-Free Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Generative Refinement Network17 Sep 2026
- 2026Attribute Token Arithmetic: Disentangled and Continuous Semantic Control for Visual Autoregressive Models28 Aug 2026
- 2026Model the Edit, Not the Image: Visual Autoregressive Editing from a Source-Centric Perspective10 Aug 2026
- 2026SynVAR: Synergizing Spatial and Semantic Alignment in Visual Autoregressive Model8 Aug 2026
- 2026Instruction-based Image Editing: A Survey on Data, Models, Evaluation, and Applications28 Jul 2026
- 2026UniGen-AR: Unifying Visual Generation with Auto-Regressive Modeling27 Jul 2026
- 2026ScaleErasure: Inference-Time Minimal Intervention for Precise Concept Erasure in Next-Scale Autoregressive Image Generation28 Jun 2026
- 2026Edit the Bits, Diff the Codes: Bitwise Residual Editing for Visual Autoregressive Models11 Jun 2026
- 2026ScaleMoGen: Autoregressive Next-Scale Prediction for Human Motion Generation12 May 2026
- 2026Prompt-Guided Image Editing with Masked Logit Nudging in Visual Autoregressive Models16 Apr 2026
- 2026Rethinking Structure Preservation in Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Models30 Mar 2026
12 newest of 16 All 16 (JSON)
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