mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Interpretable Motion-Attentive Maps: Spatio-Temporally Localizing Concepts in Video Diffusion Transformers

arXiv 2603.02919 ↗First posted 3 Mar 2026cs.CV cs.AI cs.LGcited by 1

On the map: Diffusion models → Video generation

Abstract (arXiv)

Video Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) have been synthesizing high-quality video with high fidelity from given text descriptions involving motion. However, understanding how Video DiTs convert motion words into video remains insufficient. Furthermore, while prior studies on interpretable saliency maps primarily target objects, motion-related behavior in Video DiTs remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we investigate concrete motion features that specify when and which object moves for a given motion concept. First, to spatially localize, we introduce GramCol, which adaptively produces per-frame saliency maps for any text concept, including both motion and non-motion. Second, we propose a motion-feature selection algorithm to obtain an Interpretable Motion-Attentive Map (IMAP) that localizes motion spatially and temporally. Our method discovers concept saliency maps without the need for any gradient calculation or parameter update. Experimentally, our method shows outstanding localization capability on the motion localization task and zero-shot video semantic segmentation, providing interpretable and clearer saliency maps for both motion and non-motion concepts.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 72 of its 86 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Mar 2026.

Builds on

72 of 86 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025SANA-Video: Efficient Video Generation with Block Linear Diffusion Transformer29 Sep
  2. 2025Emergent Temporal Correspondences from Video Diffusion Transformers20 Jun
  3. 2025Sparse-vDiT: Unleashing the Power of Sparse Attention to Accelerate Video Diffusion Transformers3 Jun
  4. 2025Training-free and Adaptive Sparse Attention for Efficient Long Video Generation28 Feb
  5. 2025Sparse VideoGen: Accelerating Video Diffusion Transformers with Spatial-Temporal Sparsity3 Feb
  6. 2024Video Motion Transfer with Diffusion Transformers10 Dec
  7. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer12 Aug
  8. 2024VideoCrafter2: Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Models17 Jan

Other references · 64

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
  4. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
  5. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,974
  6. 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,968
  7. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
  8. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,847
  9. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  10. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,101
  11. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
  12. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 3,045
38 more
  1. 2022DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusioncited by 3,025
  2. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,708
  3. 2024Gemma 2: Improving Open Language Models at a Practical Sizecited by 1,998
  4. 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,660
  5. 2015Show, Attend and Tell: Neural Image Caption Generation with Visual Attentioncited by 1,423
  6. 2025DINOv3cited by 1,414
  7. 2019What Does BERT Look At? An Analysis of BERT's Attentioncited by 1,003
  8. 2022In-context Learning and Induction Headscited by 964
  9. 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 906
  10. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 864
  11. 2024Simple and Effective Masked Diffusion Language Modelscited by 848
  12. 2023Dissecting Recall of Factual Associations in Auto-Regressive Language Modelscited by 528
  13. 2022Improving Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems using Manifold Constraintscited by 508
  14. 2023InternVid: A Large-scale Video-Text Dataset for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 497
  15. 2022Diffusion Art or Digital Forgery? Investigating Data Replication in Diffusion Modelscited by 424
  16. 2024Guiding a Diffusion Model with a Bad Version of Itselfcited by 299
  17. 2024Applying Guidance in a Limited Interval Improves Sample and Distribution Quality in Diffusion Modelscited by 254
  18. 2022What the DAAM: Interpreting Stable Diffusion Using Cross Attentioncited by 236
  19. 2023MeViS: A Large-scale Benchmark for Video Segmentation with Motion Expressionscited by 228
  20. 2023Understanding and Mitigating Copying in Diffusion Modelscited by 209
  21. 2020Understanding How Dimension Reduction Tools Work: An Empirical Approach to Deciphering t-SNE, UMAP, TriMAP, and PaCMAP for Data Visualizationcited by 173
  22. 2025Do generative video models understand physical principles?cited by 161
  23. 2024CFG++: Manifold-constrained Classifier Free Guidance for Diffusion Modelscited by 149
  24. 2023Understanding the Latent Space of Diffusion Models through the Lens of Riemannian Geometrycited by 125
  25. 2022Diffusion Probabilistic Model Made Slimcited by 121
  26. 2024Detecting, Explaining, and Mitigating Memorization in Diffusion Modelscited by 95
  27. 2025Why Is Spatial Reasoning Hard for VLMs? An Attention Mechanism Perspective on Focus Areascited by 95
  28. 2024A Primer on the Inner Workings of Transformer-based Language Modelscited by 85
  29. 2024Classifier-Free Guidance is a Predictor-Correctorcited by 84
  30. 2025Your Large Vision-Language Model Only Needs A Few Attention Heads For Visual Groundingcited by 83
  31. 2022Perceptual Grouping in Contrastive Vision-Language Modelscited by 82
  32. 2023DVIS: Decoupled Video Instance Segmentation Frameworkcited by 77
  33. 2024Attention Heads of Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 67
  34. 2024Boosting Diffusion Models with Moving Average Sampling in Frequency Domaincited by 55
  35. 2025ConceptAttention: Diffusion Transformers Learn Highly Interpretable Featurescited by 52
  36. 2024Towards Memorization-Free Diffusion Modelscited by 50
  37. 2024EmerDiff: Emerging Pixel-level Semantic Knowledge in Diffusion Modelscited by 43
  38. 2024Unveiling Visual Perception in Language Models: An Attention Head Analysis Approachcited by 35

50 most cited of 64 All 64 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Animate Your Motion: Turning Still Images into Dynamic Videos
  2. 2026MotionAdapter: Video Motion Transfer via Content-Aware Attention Customization
  3. 2026Motion Concept Unlearning in Video Diffusion Models
  4. 2025Decouple and Track: Benchmarking and Improving Video Diffusion Transformers for Motion Transfer
  5. 2024MotionFlow: Attention-Driven Motion Transfer in Video Diffusion Models
  6. 2024FRESCO: Spatial-Temporal Correspondence for Zero-Shot Video Translation
  7. 2025TransFlow: Motion Knowledge Transfer from Video Diffusion Models to Video Salient Object Detection
  8. 2025Image Diffusion Models Exhibit Emergent Temporal Propagation in Videos