mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Condition Errors Refinement in Autoregressive Image Generation with Diffusion Loss

arXiv 2602.07022 ↗First posted 2 Feb 2026eess.IV cs.CV cs.LGcited by 9

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion foundations and sampling

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent studies have explored autoregressive models for image generation, with promising results, and have combined diffusion models with autoregressive frameworks to optimize image generation via diffusion losses. In this study, we present a theoretical analysis of diffusion and autoregressive models with diffusion loss, highlighting the latter's advantages. We present a theoretical comparison of conditional diffusion and autoregressive diffusion with diffusion loss, demonstrating that patch denoising optimization in autoregressive models effectively mitigates condition errors and leads to a stable condition distribution. Our analysis also reveals that autoregressive condition generation refines the condition, causing the condition error influence to decay exponentially. In addition, we introduce a novel condition refinement approach based on Optimal Transport (OT) theory to address ``condition inconsistency''. We theoretically demonstrate that formulating condition refinement as a Wasserstein Gradient Flow ensures convergence toward the ideal condition distribution, effectively mitigating condition inconsistency. Experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method over diffusion and autoregressive models with diffusion loss methods.

Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 29 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.

Builds on

29 of 43 references.

Closest ancestors · 10

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024ImageFolder: Autoregressive Image Generation with Folded Tokens2 Oct
  2. 2024Adapting to Unknown Low-Dimensional Structures in Score-Based Diffusion Models23 May
  3. 2023DiffiT: Diffusion Vision Transformers for Image Generation4 Dec
  4. 2023MDTv2: Masked Diffusion Transformer is a Strong Image Synthesizer25 Mar
  5. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers19 Dec
  6. 2022Score-based Generative Modeling Secretly Minimizes the Wasserstein Distance13 Dec
  7. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance26 Jul
  8. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models20 Dec
  9. 2021Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation30 May
  10. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis11 May

Other references · 19

  1. 2022Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,603
  2. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  3. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 3,595
  4. 2016Improved Techniques for Training GANscited by 2,938
  5. 2021Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1,296
  6. 2024Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Predictioncited by 1,005
  7. 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 761
  8. 2024Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generationcited by 760
  9. 2024Autoregressive Image Generation without Vector Quantizationcited by 644
  10. 2022On the detection of synthetic images generated by diffusion modelscited by 282
  11. 2021More Control for Free! Image Synthesis with Semantic Diffusion Guidancecited by 211
  12. 2024Lumina-mGPT: Illuminate Flexible Photorealistic Text-to-Image Generation with Multimodal Generative Pretrainingcited by 148
7 more
  1. 2024Randomized Autoregressive Visual Generationcited by 125
  2. 2023GIVT: Generative Infinite-Vocabulary Transformerscited by 80
  3. 2024Multimodal Latent Language Modeling with Next-Token Diffusioncited by 47
  4. 2025Draw ALL Your Imagine: A Holistic Benchmark and Agent Framework for Complex Instruction-based Image Generationcited by 30
  5. 2024MMAR: Towards Lossless Multi-Modal Auto-Regressive Probabilistic Modelingcited by 19
  6. 2025Speed Always Wins: A Survey on Efficient Architectures for Large Language Modelscited by 16
  7. 2023Seismic Data Interpolation via Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models with Coherence-corrected Resamplingcited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.

9 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025DiSA: Diffusion Step Annealing in Autoregressive Image Generation
  2. 2023Compensation Sampling for Improved Convergence in Diffusion Models
  3. 2024E-CAR: Efficient Continuous Autoregressive Image Generation via Multistage Modeling
  4. 2023Reducing Spatial Fitting Error in Distillation of Denoising Diffusion Models
  5. 2024DART: Denoising Autoregressive Transformer for Scalable Text-to-Image Generation
  6. 2024Input-Adaptive Generative Dynamics in Diffusion Models
  7. 2025MADFormer: Mixed Autoregressive and Diffusion Transformers for Continuous Image Generation
  8. 2025Autoregressive Distillation of Diffusion Transformers