# Training-Free Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23897 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23897/

## 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.

## 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)

- [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)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11416/) (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)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10789/) (2022)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02905/) (2024)
- [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)
- [Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12572/) (2022)
- [Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18869/) (2024)
- [Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14822/) (2021)
- [MasaCtrl: Tuning-Free Mutual Self-Attention Control for Consistent Image Synthesis and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08465/) (2023)
- [Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03027/) (2023)
- [VideoPoet: A Large Language Model for Zero-Shot Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14125/) (2023)
- [Infinity: Scaling Bitwise AutoRegressive Modeling for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04431/) (2024)
- [GODIVA: Generating Open-DomaIn Videos from nAtural Descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14806/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17761/) (2025)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling for Instruction-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15772/) (2025)
- [Towards Better & Faster Autoregressive Image Generation: From the Perspective of Entropy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09012/) (2025)
- [ScaleMoGen: Autoregressive Next-Scale Prediction for Human Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11704/) (2026)
- [RewardFlow: Generate Images by Optimizing What You Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08536/) (2026)
- [InstructAttribute: Fine-grained Object Attributes editing with Instruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00751/) (2025)
- [Markovian Scale Prediction: A New Era of Visual Autoregressive Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23334/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Visual Autoregressive Acceleration via Dual-Linkage Entropy Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01345/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Structure Preservation in Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28367/) (2026)
- [Prompt-Guided Image Editing with Masked Logit Nudging in Visual Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14591/) (2026)
- [Mastering Regional 3DGS: Locating, Initializing, and Editing with Diverse 2D Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05426/) (2025)
- [DiverseVAR: Balancing Diversity and Quality of Next-Scale Visual Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21415/) (2025)
- [Edit the Bits, Diff the Codes: Bitwise Residual Editing for Visual Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13558/) (2026)
- [ScaleErasure: Inference-Time Minimal Intervention for Precise Concept Erasure in Next-Scale Autoregressive Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29282/) (2026)
- [UniGen-AR: Unifying Visual Generation with Auto-Regressive Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24157/) (2026)
- [Instruction-based Image Editing: A Survey on Data, Models, Evaluation, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25642/) (2026)
- [SynVAR: Synergizing Spatial and Semantic Alignment in Visual Autoregressive Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07948/) (2026)
- [Model the Edit, Not the Image: Visual Autoregressive Editing from a Source-Centric Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09057/) (2026)
- [Attribute Token Arithmetic: Disentangled and Continuous Semantic Control for Visual Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28082/) (2026)
- [Refinement Is Inherently Editable: Training-Free Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Generative Refinement Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20633/) (2026)
- [Edit-VAR: Taming Visual Autoregressive Model for Precise Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21268/) (2026)

## 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.