# Instant Preference Alignment for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17718 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17718/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 20 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)
- LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation / [Diffusion and multimodal model alignment](https://mlsanity.com/alignment/diffusion-and-multimodal-model-alignment/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Generating Diverse High-Fidelity Images with VQ-VAE-2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00446/) (2019)
- [Training Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13301/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00923/) (2023)
- [Compositional Visual Generation with Composable Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01714/) (2022)
- [Human Preference Score: Better Aligning Text-to-Image Models with Human Preference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14420/) (2023)
- [Mastering Text-to-Image Diffusion: Recaptioning, Planning, and Generating with Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11708/) (2024)
- [Style Aligned Image Generation via Shared Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02133/) (2023)
- [Implicit Style-Content Separation using B-LoRA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14572/) (2024)
- [Prometheus-Vision: Vision-Language Model as a Judge for Fine-Grained Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06591/) (2024)
- [EmoSet: A Large-scale Visual Emotion Dataset with Rich Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07961/) (2023)
- [Zeroth-Order Optimization Meets Human Feedback: Provable Learning via Ranking Oracles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03751/) (2023)
- [ViPer: Visual Personalization of Generative Models via Individual Preference Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17365/) (2024)
- [Beyond Inserting: Learning Identity Embedding for Semantic-Fidelity Personalized Diffusion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00631/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Premier: Personalized Preference Modulation with Learnable User Embedding in Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20725/) (2026)
- [Pseudo-Unification: Entropy Probing Reveals Divergent Information Patterns in Unified Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10949/) (2026)
- [PIPBench: A Profile-Inclusive Framework for Personalized Image Generation Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06440/) (2026)
- [Visual Personalization Turing Test](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22680/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-image (T2I) generation has greatly enhanced creative expression, yet achieving preference-aligned generation in a real-time and training-free manner remains challenging. Previous methods often rely on static, pre-collected preferences or fine-tuning, limiting adaptability to evolving and nuanced user intents. In this paper, we highlight the need for instant preference-aligned T2I generation and propose a training-free framework grounded in multimodal large language model (MLLM) priors. Our framework decouples the task into two components: preference understanding and preference-guided generation. For preference understanding, we leverage MLLMs to automatically extract global preference signals from a reference image and enrich a given prompt using structured instruction design. Our approach supports broader and more fine-grained coverage of user preferences than existing methods. For preference-guided generation, we integrate global keyword-based control and local region-aware cross-attention modulation to steer the diffusion model without additional training, enabling precise alignment across both global attributes and local elements. The entire framework supports multi-round interactive refinement, facilitating real-time and context-aware image generation. Extensive experiments on the Viper dataset and our collected benchmark demonstrate that our method outperforms prior approaches in both quantitative metrics and human evaluations, and opens up new possibilities for dialog-based generation and MLLM-diffusion integration.