mlsanityData to 13 Oct 2026

Composition of Memory Experts for Diffusion World Models

arXiv 2605.18813 ↗First posted 12 May 2026cs.LG cs.AIcited by 3

On the map: World models → Latent predictive world models

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Abstract (arXiv)

World models aim to predict plausible futures consistent with past observations, a capability central to planning and decision-making in reinforcement learning. Yet, existing architectures face a fundamental memory trade-off: transformers preserve local detail but are bottlenecked by quadratic attention, while recurrent and state-space models scale more efficiently but compress history at the cost of fidelity. To overcome this trade-off, we suggest decoupling future-past consistency from any single architecture and instead leveraging a set of specialized experts. We introduce a diffusion-based framework that integrates heterogeneous memory models through a contrastive product-of-experts formulation. Our approach instantiates three complementary roles: a short-term memory expert that captures fine local dynamics, a long-term memory expert that stores episodic history in external diffusion weights via lightweight test-time finetuning, and a spatial long-term memory expert that enforces geometric and spatial coherence. This compositional design avoids mode collapse and scales to long contexts without incurring a quadratic cost. Across simulated and real-world benchmarks, our method improves temporal consistency, recall of past observations, and navigation performance, establishing a novel paradigm for building and operating memory-augmented diffusion world models.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). Placed in Latent predictive world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 53 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.

Builds on

53 of 59 references.

References · 53

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,106
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,952
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,777
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  7. 2023Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spacescited by 4,658
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38 more
  1. 2018Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolutioncited by 766
  2. 2024Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusioncited by 653
  3. 2023GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 627
  4. 2024Movie Gen: A Cast of Media Foundation Modelscited by 624
  5. 2022Compositional Visual Generation with Composable Diffusion Modelscited by 620
  6. 2024Latte: Latent Diffusion Transformer for Video Generationcited by 539
  7. 2021Linear Transformers Are Secretly Fast Weight Programmerscited by 483
  8. 2024Lumiere: A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generationcited by 451
  9. 2023Simple diffusion: End-to-end diffusion for high resolution imagescited by 414
  10. 2024Titans: Learning to Memorize at Test Timecited by 312
  11. 2024Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Ataricited by 292
  12. 2024Open-Sora Plan: Open-Source Large Video Generation Modelcited by 288
  13. 2024Navigation World Modelscited by 264
  14. 2022Long Video Generation with Time-Agnostic VQGAN and Time-Sensitive Transformercited by 244
  15. 2024StreamingT2V: Consistent, Dynamic, and Extendable Long Video Generation from Textcited by 244
  16. 2023NoMaD: Goal Masked Diffusion Policies for Navigation and Explorationcited by 236
  17. 2023Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Compositional Generation with Energy-Based Diffusion Models and MCMCcited by 219
  18. 2023NUWA-XL: Diffusion over Diffusion for eXtremely Long Video Generationcited by 170
  19. 2025History-Guided Video Diffusioncited by 167
  20. 2022GNM: A General Navigation Model to Drive Any Robotcited by 161
  21. 2025Context as Memory: Scene-Consistent Interactive Long Video Generation with Memory Retrievalcited by 159
  22. 2025Video World Models with Long-term Spatial Memorycited by 128
  23. 2025Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systemscited by 125
  24. 2021Rapid Exploration for Open-World Navigation with Latent Goal Modelscited by 118
  25. 2023Compositional Foundation Models for Hierarchical Planningcited by 94
  26. 2024FreeLong: Training-Free Long Video Generation with SpectralBlend Temporal Attentioncited by 88
  27. 2024Classifier-Free Guidance is a Predictor-Correctorcited by 81
  28. 2024GEM: A Generalizable Ego-Vision Multimodal World Model for Fine-Grained Ego-Motion, Object Dynamics, and Scene Composition Controlcited by 77
  29. 2025Long-Context State-Space Video World Modelscited by 61
  30. 2022Efficient Video Prediction via Sparsely Conditioned Flow Matchingcited by 55
  31. 2022Temporally Consistent Transformers for Video Generationcited by 43
  32. 2022Evaluating Long-Term Memory in 3D Mazescited by 42
  33. 2023Finetuning Offline World Models in the Real Worldcited by 39
  34. 2024Mastering Memory Tasks with World Modelscited by 38
  35. 2023Facing Off World Model Backbones: RNNs, Transformers, and S4cited by 31
  36. 2024SlowFast-VGen: Slow-Fast Learning for Action-Driven Long Video Generationcited by 28
  37. 2025StateSpaceDiffuser: Bringing Long Context to Diffusion World Modelscited by 17
  38. 2013Estimating Uncertain Spatial Relationships in Roboticscited by 14

50 most cited of 53 All 53 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 13 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

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  1. 2025On Memory: A comparison of memory mechanisms in world models
  2. 2026Coarse-to-Fine Compositional Diffusion for Long-Horizon Planning
  3. 2025EDELINE: Enhancing Memory in Diffusion-based World Models via Linear-Time Sequence Modeling
  4. 2026MemoWM: How World Models Change What Agents Need to Remember
  5. 2026HaM-World: Soft-Hamiltonian World Models with Selective Memory for Planning
  6. 2026BRICKS-WM: Building Reusability via Interface Composition Kinetics for Structured World Models
  7. 2025Zero-shot World Models via Search in Memory
  8. 2026Compositional Visual Planning via Inference-Time Diffusion Scaling