mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Efficient Text-to-Image Generation: An Adaptive Step Schedule Controller for Diffusion Models

arXiv 2609.16572 ↗First posted 15 Sep 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing

Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-image diffusion models often use a fixed number of denoising steps, balancing time costs and image quality. However, the optimal number of steps depends on the complexity of the input text prompt. We propose an adaptive diffusion controller that dynamically adjusts the number of steps to generate high-quality images efficiently, without additional model training. By leveraging a mixture of step schedules with varying step sizes and evaluating the error term discrepancy at each timestep, our method transitions between schedules to optimize performance. Experiments on COCO and DiffusionDB show that our approach reduces inference time while maintaining visual fidelity, offering a more efficient alternative for text-to-image diffusion models.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 24 of its 25 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Sep 2026.

Builds on

24 of 25 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023GLIGEN: Open-Set Grounded Text-to-Image Generation17 Jan
  2. 2022DiffusionDB: A Large-scale Prompt Gallery Dataset for Text-to-Image Generative Models26 Oct
  3. 2022DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation25 Aug
  4. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr
  5. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models20 Dec

Other references · 19

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  4. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,608
  5. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
  6. 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,968
  7. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,847
  8. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 3,045
  9. 2021CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioningcited by 2,424
  10. 2023Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 890
  11. 2022On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 725
  12. 2022Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifoldscited by 700
7 more
  1. 2021Knowledge Distillation in Iterative Generative Models for Improved Sampling Speedcited by 348
  2. 2023Training-Free Layout Control with Cross-Attention Guidancecited by 313
  3. 2023Diffusion Self-Guidance for Controllable Image Generationcited by 305
  4. 2023Human Preference Score: Better Aligning Text-to-Image Models with Human Preferencecited by 287
  5. 2023Q-Diffusion: Quantizing Diffusion Modelscited by 273
  6. 2023AutoDiffusion: Training-Free Optimization of Time Steps and Architectures for Automated Diffusion Model Accelerationcited by 70
  7. 2023Denoising Diffusion Step-aware Modelscited by 24

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  1. 2025Cost-Aware Routing for Efficient Text-To-Image Generation
  2. 2024Controllable Generation with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models: A Survey
  3. 2023AdaDiff: Adaptive Step Selection for Fast Diffusion Models
  4. 2024Schedule On the Fly: Diffusion Time Prediction for Faster and Better Image Generation
  5. 2022eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers
  6. 2025Reusing Computation in Text-to-Image Diffusion for Efficient Generation of Image Sets
  7. 2025Optimal Stepsize for Diffusion Sampling
  8. 2023Nested Diffusion Processes for Anytime Image Generation