# Long-Context State-Space Video World Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20171 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20171/

## Key facts

- Cited by 65 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video-generation world models and simulators, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 79 of its 89 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 May 2025.

## Placed in

- World models / [Video-generation world models and simulators](https://mlsanity.com/wm/video-generation-world-models-and-simulators/)
- Diffusion models / [Video generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/video-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 79)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01603/) (2019)
- [Transformers are SSMs: Generalized Models and Efficient Algorithms Through Structured State Space Duality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21060/) (2024)
- [Multimodal Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04732/) (2018)
- [Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06525/) (2024)
- [Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01999/) (2018)
- [Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01392/) (2024)
- [VideoGPT: Video Generation using VQ-VAE and Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10157/) (2021)
- [Movie Gen: A Cast of Media Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13720/) (2024)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00103/) (2024)
- [Gated Delta Networks: Improving Mamba2 with Delta Rule](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06464/) (2024)
- [Gated Linear Attention Transformers with Hardware-Efficient Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06635/) (2023)
- [Linear Transformers Are Secretly Fast Weight Programmers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11174/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 65)

- [Self Forcing: Bridging the Train-Test Gap in Autoregressive Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08009/) (2025)
- [Memory in the Age of AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13564/) (2025)
- [Matrix-game 2.0: An open-source real-time and streaming interactive world model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13009/) (2025)
- [Diffusion LLMs Can Do Faster-Than-AR Inference via Discrete Diffusion Forcing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09192/) (2025)
- [Cameras as Relative Positional Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10496/) (2025)
- [RELIC: Interactive Video World Model with Long-Horizon Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04040/) (2025)
- [Geometry Forcing: Marrying Video Diffusion and 3D Representation for Consistent World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07982/) (2025)
- [Mixture of Contexts for Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21058/) (2025)
- [MotionStream: Real-Time Video Generation with Interactive Motion Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01266/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on World Models for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16732/) (2025)
- [Memory Forcing: Spatio-Temporal Memory for Consistent Scene Generation on Minecraft](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03198/) (2025)
- [End-to-End Training for Autoregressive Video Diffusion via Self-Resampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15702/) (2025)
- [VideoSSM: Autoregressive Long Video Generation with Hybrid State-Space Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04519/) (2025)
- [StreamDiffusionV2: A Streaming System for Dynamic and Interactive Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07399/) (2025)
- [VerseCrafter: Dynamic Realistic Video World Model with 4D Geometric Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05138/) (2026)
- [BAgger: Backwards Aggregation for Mitigating Drift in Autoregressive Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12080/) (2025)
- [AnchorWeave: World-Consistent Video Generation with Retrieved Local Spatial Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14941/) (2026)
- [Anchor Forcing: Anchor Memory and Tri-Region RoPE for Interactive Streaming Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13405/) (2026)
- [Simulating the Visual World with Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08585/) (2025)
- [Addressable Memory for Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07408/) (2026)
- [Beyond Pixel Histories: World Models with Persistent 3D State](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03482/) (2026)
- [Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Evaluating State Evolution in Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13215/) (2026)
- [VideoWorld 2: Learning Transferable Knowledge from Real-world Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10102/) (2026)
- [Mode Seeking meets Mean Seeking for Fast Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24289/) (2026)
- [WorldCam: Interactive Autoregressive 3D Gaming Worlds with Camera Pose as a Unifying Geometric Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16871/) (2026)
- [Recurrent Autoregressive Diffusion: Global Memory Meets Local Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12940/) (2025)
- [MemLearner: Learning to Query Context memory for Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31734/) (2026)
- [WorldPack: Dynamic Frame Compression for Long-context Video World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02473/) (2025)
- [Flow Equivariant World Models: Memory for Partially Observed Dynamic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01075/) (2026)
- [Towards Interactive Video World Modeling: Frontiers, Challenges, Benchmarks, and Future Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01164/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Video diffusion models have recently shown promise for world modeling through autoregressive frame prediction conditioned on actions. However, they struggle to maintain long-term memory due to the high computational cost associated with processing extended sequences in attention layers. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel architecture leveraging state-space models (SSMs) to extend temporal memory without compromising computational efficiency. Unlike previous approaches that retrofit SSMs for non-causal vision tasks, our method fully exploits the inherent advantages of SSMs in causal sequence modeling. Central to our design is a block-wise SSM scanning scheme, which strategically trades off spatial consistency for extended temporal memory, combined with dense local attention to ensure coherence between consecutive frames. We evaluate the long-term memory capabilities of our model through spatial retrieval and reasoning tasks over extended horizons. Experiments on Memory Maze and Minecraft datasets demonstrate that our approach surpasses baselines in preserving long-range memory, while maintaining practical inference speeds suitable for interactive applications.