Towards Better & Faster Autoregressive Image Generation: From the Perspective of Entropy
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
In this work, we first revisit the sampling issues in current autoregressive (AR) image generation models and identify that image tokens, unlike text tokens, exhibit lower information density and non-uniform spatial distribution. Accordingly, we present an entropy-informed decoding strategy that facilitates higher autoregressive generation quality with faster synthesis speed. Specifically, the proposed method introduces two main innovations: 1) dynamic temperature control guided by spatial entropy of token distributions, enhancing the balance between content diversity, alignment accuracy, and structural coherence in both mask-based and scale-wise models, without extra computational overhead, and 2) entropy-aware acceptance rules in speculative decoding, achieving near-lossless generation at about 85% of the inference cost of conventional acceleration methods. Extensive experiments across multiple benchmarks using diverse AR image generation models demonstrate the effectiveness and generalizability of our approach in enhancing both generation quality and sampling speed.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 62 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2025.
Builds on
62 of 69 references.
References · 62
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
- 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,608
- 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
- 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 13,028
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
- 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,288
- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
- 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,789
- 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,253
- 2019The Curious Case of Neural Text Degenerationcited by 2,916
38 more
- 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,120
- 2024Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameterscited by 1,986
- 2022Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decodingcited by 1,653
- 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,295
- 2022MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformercited by 1,099
- 2024Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Predictioncited by 1,023
- 2023Accelerating Large Language Model Decoding with Speculative Samplingcited by 1,006
- 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 927
- 2023Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 890
- 2023PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 864
- 2016Conditional Image Generation with PixelCNN Decoderscited by 862
- 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 812
- 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 781
- 2024Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generationcited by 777
- 2019CTRL: A Conditional Transformer Language Model for Controllable Generationcited by 762
- 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 752
- 2022Autoregressive Image Generation using Residual Quantizationcited by 722
- 2021CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformerscited by 694
- 2021Vector-quantized Image Modeling with Improved VQGANcited by 658
- 2023Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generationcited by 640
- 2023OPERA: Alleviating Hallucination in Multi-Modal Large Language Models via Over-Trust Penalty and Retrospection-Allocationcited by 478
- 2024ELLA: Equip Diffusion Models with LLM for Enhanced Semantic Alignmentcited by 475
- 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 457
- 2023DoLa: Decoding by Contrasting Layers Improves Factuality in Large Language Modelscited by 376
- 2025rStar-Math: Small LLMs Can Master Math Reasoning with Self-Evolved Deep Thinkingcited by 313
- 2024Infinity: Scaling Bitwise AutoRegressive Modeling for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 304
- 2024An Image is Worth 32 Tokens for Reconstruction and Generationcited by 302
- 2022A Contrastive Framework for Neural Text Generationcited by 225
- 2024TokenFlow: Unified Image Tokenizer for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 202
- 2025UniTok: A Unified Tokenizer for Visual Generation and Understandingcited by 153
- 2024Lumina-mGPT: Illuminate Flexible Photorealistic Text-to-Image Generation with Multimodal Generative Pretrainingcited by 150
- 2023Planting a SEED of Vision in Large Language Modelcited by 140
- 2024HART: Efficient Visual Generation with Hybrid Autoregressive Transformercited by 132
- 2024Randomized Autoregressive Visual Generationcited by 127
- 2020If beam search is the answer, what was the question?cited by 116
- 2024ANOLE: An Open, Autoregressive, Native Large Multimodal Models for Interleaved Image-Text Generationcited by 114
- 2024Image and Video Tokenization with Binary Spherical Quantizationcited by 112
- 2024Accelerating Auto-regressive Text-to-Image Generation with Training-free Speculative Jacobi Decodingcited by 66
50 most cited of 62 All 62 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 9.
12 papers.
- 2025Semantic Context Matters: Improving Conditioning for Autoregressive Modelscited by 7
- 2026DiT-IC: Aligned Diffusion Transformer for Efficient Image Compressioncited by 5
- 2026MAR-GRPO: Stabilized GRPO for AR-diffusion Hybrid Image Generationcited by 2
- 2026EcoVideo: Entropy-Orchestrated Video Generation Paradigm in Cloud-Edge Dynamicscited by 2
- 2026Temporal State Transport in Video Generation: Diagnosing and Correcting Spectral Imbalancecited by 1
- 2025Diversity Has Always Been There in Your Visual Autoregressive Modelscited by 0
- 2025FR-TTS: Test-Time Scaling for NTP-based Image Generation with Effective Filling-based Reward Signalcited by 0
- 2026Entropy-Guided k-Guard Sampling for Long-Horizon Autoregressive Video Generationcited by 0
- 2026CASCADE: Context-Aware Relaxation for Speculative Image Decodingcited by 0
- 2026Diffusion Image Generation with Explicit Modeling of Data Manifold Geometrycited by 0
- 2026Improving Sample Diversity in Autoregressive Text-to-Image Generation via Cluster Truncationcited by 0
- 2026MaskSense: Confronting the Visual Exploration Trap in Masked Image Generationcited by 0
- 2026MaskSense: Confronting the Visual Exploration Trap in Masked Image Generation12 Oct 2026
- 2026Temporal State Transport in Video Generation: Diagnosing and Correcting Spectral Imbalance8 Sep 2026
- 2026Improving Sample Diversity in Autoregressive Text-to-Image Generation via Cluster Truncation12 Jul 2026
- 2026EcoVideo: Entropy-Orchestrated Video Generation Paradigm in Cloud-Edge Dynamics29 Jun 2026
- 2026Diffusion Image Generation with Explicit Modeling of Data Manifold Geometry25 May 2026
- 2026CASCADE: Context-Aware Relaxation for Speculative Image Decoding8 May 2026
- 2026MAR-GRPO: Stabilized GRPO for AR-diffusion Hybrid Image Generation8 Apr 2026
- 2026DiT-IC: Aligned Diffusion Transformer for Efficient Image Compression13 Mar 2026
- 2026Entropy-Guided k-Guard Sampling for Long-Horizon Autoregressive Video Generation27 Jan 2026
- 2025FR-TTS: Test-Time Scaling for NTP-based Image Generation with Effective Filling-based Reward Signal29 Nov 2025
- 2025Diversity Has Always Been There in Your Visual Autoregressive Models21 Nov 2025
- 2025Semantic Context Matters: Improving Conditioning for Autoregressive Models18 Nov 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Annealed Relaxation of Speculative Decoding for Faster Autoregressive Image Generation
- 2026CSD: Content-aware Speculative Decoding for Efficient Image Generation
- 2025Hawk: Leveraging Spatial Context for Faster Autoregressive Text-to-Image Generation
- 2025Autoregressive Image Generation Needs Only a Few Lines of Cached Tokens
- 2026SSD: Spatially Speculative Decoding Accelerates Autoregressive Image Generation
- 2025Speculative Coupled Decoding for Training-Free Lossless Acceleration of Autoregressive Visual Generation
- 2025Grouped Speculative Decoding for Autoregressive Image Generation
- 2025Speculative Decoding and Beyond: An In-Depth Survey of Techniques