mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

RewardFlow: Generate Images by Optimizing What You Reward

arXiv 2604.08536 ↗First posted 9 Apr 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion and flow policies for robotics

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce RewardFlow, an inversion-free framework that steers pretrained diffusion and flow-matching models at inference time through multi-reward Langevin dynamics. RewardFlow unifies complementary differentiable rewards for semantic alignment, perceptual fidelity, localized grounding, object consistency, and human preference, and further introduces a differentiable VQA-based reward that provides fine-grained semantic supervision through language-vision reasoning. To coordinate these heterogeneous objectives, we design a prompt-aware adaptive policy that extracts semantic primitives from the instruction, infers edit intent, and dynamically modulates reward weights and step sizes throughout sampling. Across several image editing and compositional generation benchmarks, RewardFlow delivers state-of-the-art edit fidelity and compositional alignment.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 45 of its 51 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2026.

Builds on

45 of 51 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024DyMO: Training-Free Diffusion Model Alignment with Dynamic Multi-Objective Scheduling1 Dec

Other references · 44

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  4. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
  5. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 7,916
  6. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
  7. 2022Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,603
  8. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  9. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  10. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
  11. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generationcited by 3,286
  12. 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,784
32 more
  1. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,591
  2. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasetscited by 2,526
  3. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  4. 2022An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversioncited by 2,231
  5. 2021SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 1,903
  6. 2022Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Modelscited by 1,172
  7. 2022Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 1,168
  8. 2025SigLIP 2: Multilingual Vision-Language Encoders with Improved Semantic Understanding, Localization, and Dense Featurescited by 1,127
  9. 2021StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagerycited by 990
  10. 2023One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillationcited by 978
  11. 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 973
  12. 2025FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Spacecited by 960
  13. 2023PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 854
  14. 2023Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 847
  15. 2021RegionCLIP: Region-based Language-Image Pretrainingcited by 612
  16. 2023An Edit Friendly DDPM Noise Space: Inversion and Manipulationscited by 243
  17. 2024FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Modelscited by 214
  18. 2023LEDITS++: Limitless Image Editing using Text-to-Image Modelscited by 147
  19. 2023Direct Inversion: Boosting Diffusion-based Editing with 3 Lines of Codecited by 145
  20. 2024ReNO: Enhancing One-step Text-to-Image Models through Reward-based Noise Optimizationcited by 115
  21. 2023Inversion-Free Image Editing with Natural Languagecited by 106
  22. 2023Improving Tuning-Free Real Image Editing with Proximal Guidancecited by 87
  23. 2024RegionDrag: Fast Region-Based Image Editing with Diffusion Modelscited by 31
  24. 2025LoRA-Edit: Controllable First-Frame-Guided Video Editing via Mask-Aware LoRA Fine-Tuningcited by 27
  25. 2024TurboEdit: Instant text-based image editingcited by 26
  26. 2025Training-Free Text-Guided Image Editing with Visual Autoregressive Modelcited by 21
  27. 2025Training-free Geometric Image Editing on Diffusion Modelscited by 13
  28. 2025ORIGEN: Zero-Shot 3D Orientation Grounding in Text-to-Image Generationcited by 10
  29. 2024PostEdit: Posterior Sampling for Efficient Zero-Shot Image Editingcited by 9
  30. 2024Edicho: Consistent Image Editing in the Wildcited by 9
  31. 2025InstantEdit: Text-Guided Few-Step Image Editing with Piecewise Rectified Flowcited by 7
  32. 2025Training-Free Reward-Guided Image Editing via Trajectory Optimal Controlcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026RewardHarness: Self-Evolving Agentic Post-Training
  2. 2026MT-EditFlow: Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Image Editing with Flow Matching
  3. 2026How to Guide Your Flow: Few-Step Alignment via Flow Map Reward Guidance
  4. 2026FASTER: Fast Adjoint Stochastic Transport for Endpoint Refinement in Reward-Guided Image Editing
  5. 2026Test-Time Weak-to-Strong Alignment: Transferring Implicit Rewards from Weak to Strong Flow Models
  6. 2026Exploring the Design Space of Reward Backpropagation for Flow Matching
  7. 2026Trust Your Critic: Robust Reward Modeling and Reinforcement Learning for Faithful Image Editing and Generation
  8. 2026Leveraging Verifier-Based Reinforcement Learning in Image Editing