RankE co-evolves AR policy and decoder via alternating ranking optimization, improving both FID and CLIP scores on LlamaGen-XL and Janus-Pro where policy-only RL degrades FID.
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Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generation
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abstract
We introduce LlamaGen, a new family of image generation models that apply original ``next-token prediction'' paradigm of large language models to visual generation domain. It is an affirmative answer to whether vanilla autoregressive models, e.g., Llama, without inductive biases on visual signals can achieve state-of-the-art image generation performance if scaling properly. We reexamine design spaces of image tokenizers, scalability properties of image generation models, and their training data quality. The outcome of this exploration consists of: (1) An image tokenizer with downsample ratio of 16, reconstruction quality of 0.94 rFID and codebook usage of 97% on ImageNet benchmark. (2) A series of class-conditional image generation models ranging from 111M to 3.1B parameters, achieving 2.18 FID on ImageNet 256x256 benchmarks, outperforming the popular diffusion models such as LDM, DiT. (3) A text-conditional image generation model with 775M parameters, from two-stage training on LAION-COCO and high aesthetics quality images, demonstrating competitive performance of visual quality and text alignment. (4) We verify the effectiveness of LLM serving frameworks in optimizing the inference speed of image generation models and achieve 326% - 414% speedup. We release all models and codes to facilitate open-source community of visual generation and multimodal foundation models.
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- abstract We introduce LlamaGen, a new family of image generation models that apply original ``next-token prediction'' paradigm of large language models to visual generation domain. It is an affirmative answer to whether vanilla autoregressive models, e.g., Llama, without inductive biases on visual signals can achieve state-of-the-art image generation performance if scaling properly. We reexamine design spaces of image tokenizers, scalability properties of image generation models, and their training data quality. The outcome of this exploration consists of: (1) An image tokenizer with downsample ratio o
co-cited works
representative citing papers
HeadKV compresses KV cache for autoregressive image generation via head-aware budget allocation, early head-type identification from consistent patterns, and stratified token eviction.
ToBAC is the first backdoor attack on unified autoregressive models, using data or model poisoning to make triggers elicit cross-modal malicious behavior in text and image generation.
Uni-AdGen uses a unified autoregressive framework with foreground perception, instruction tuning, and coarse-to-fine preference modules to generate personalized image-text ads from noisy user behaviors, outperforming baselines on a new PAd1M dataset.
ExtraVAR enables resolution extrapolation in visual autoregressive models by stage-aware RoPE remapping and entropy-driven attention scaling, suppressing repetition and detail loss.
NTM models each generative reverse step as a conditional normalizing flow with a hybrid shallow-deep architecture, enabling exact-likelihood training and strong four-step sampling performance on text-to-image tasks.
Masked Logit Nudging aligns visual autoregressive model logits with source token maps under target prompts inside cross-attention masks, delivering top image editing results on PIE benchmarks and strong reconstructions on COCO and OpenImages while running faster than diffusion approaches.
Delta tokens compress VFM feature differences into single tokens, enabling a lightweight generative world model that predicts diverse futures with far lower compute than existing approaches.
Drift-AR achieves 3.8-5.5x speedup in AR-diffusion image models by using entropy to enable entropy-informed speculative decoding and single-step (1-NFE) anti-symmetric drifting decoding.
SOLACE improves text-to-image generation by using intrinsic self-confidence rewards from noise reconstruction accuracy during reinforcement learning post-training without external supervision.
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VVS accelerates visual AR image generation by partially skipping verifications in speculative decoding, achieving 2.8x fewer target forward passes while preserving competitive quality.
Derives exact guidance transition rates for discrete flow matching models that require only one model evaluation per sampling step and unify prior approximation-based methods.
Phoneme-guided autoregressive framework for talking-head animation that reduces inter-frame flicker via causal keyframe generation and timestamp-aware interpolation, outperforming diffusion baselines on FVD and a new BG-Flicker metric.
PacTure uses view packing and next-scale autoregressive prediction to generate consistent multi-view PBR textures faster than prior sequential or cross-attention methods.
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T2I-FactualBench is a new three-tier benchmark for factuality of knowledge-intensive concepts in T2I models, using multi-round VQA evaluation to show SOTA models need improvement.
Janus decouples visual encoding into task-specific pathways inside a single autoregressive transformer to unify multimodal understanding and generation while outperforming earlier unified models.
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VFMTok builds a generalist image tokenizer on frozen VFMs using adaptive quantization and semantic alignment, delivering gFID 1.36 for autoregressive and 1.25 for continuous generation on ImageNet with 3x faster convergence.
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Fine-tuning VLMs to output action sequences for puzzles causes emergent internal visual representations that improve performance when integrated into reasoning.
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citing papers explorer
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RankE: End-to-End Post-Training for Discrete Text-to-Image Generation with Decoder Co-Evolution
RankE co-evolves AR policy and decoder via alternating ranking optimization, improving both FID and CLIP scores on LlamaGen-XL and Janus-Pro where policy-only RL degrades FID.
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Head-Aware Key-Value Compression for Efficient Autoregressive Image Generation
HeadKV compresses KV cache for autoregressive image generation via head-aware budget allocation, early head-type identification from consistent patterns, and stratified token eviction.
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Design Your Ad: Personalized Advertising Image and Text Generation with Unified Autoregressive Models
Uni-AdGen uses a unified autoregressive framework with foreground perception, instruction tuning, and coarse-to-fine preference modules to generate personalized image-text ads from noisy user behaviors, outperforming baselines on a new PAd1M dataset.
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ExtraVAR: Stage-Aware RoPE Remapping for Resolution Extrapolation in Visual Autoregressive Models
ExtraVAR enables resolution extrapolation in visual autoregressive models by stage-aware RoPE remapping and entropy-driven attention scaling, suppressing repetition and detail loss.
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Normalizing Trajectory Models
NTM models each generative reverse step as a conditional normalizing flow with a hybrid shallow-deep architecture, enabling exact-likelihood training and strong four-step sampling performance on text-to-image tasks.
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Prompt-Guided Image Editing with Masked Logit Nudging in Visual Autoregressive Models
Masked Logit Nudging aligns visual autoregressive model logits with source token maps under target prompts inside cross-attention masks, delivering top image editing results on PIE benchmarks and strong reconstructions on COCO and OpenImages while running faster than diffusion approaches.
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A Frame is Worth One Token: Efficient Generative World Modeling with Delta Tokens
Delta tokens compress VFM feature differences into single tokens, enabling a lightweight generative world model that predicts diverse futures with far lower compute than existing approaches.
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Drift-AR: Single-Step Visual Autoregressive Generation via Anti-Symmetric Drifting
Drift-AR achieves 3.8-5.5x speedup in AR-diffusion image models by using entropy to enable entropy-informed speculative decoding and single-step (1-NFE) anti-symmetric drifting decoding.
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Improving Text-to-Image Generation with Intrinsic Self-Confidence Rewards
SOLACE improves text-to-image generation by using intrinsic self-confidence rewards from noise reconstruction accuracy during reinforcement learning post-training without external supervision.
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Beyond Patches: Global-aware Autoregressive Model for Multimodal Few-Shot Font Generation
GAR-Font is a global-aware autoregressive framework for multimodal few-shot font generation that adds global tokenization, a language-style adapter, and post-refinement to improve style coherence over patch-based methods.
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VVS: Accelerating Speculative Decoding for Visual Autoregressive Generation via Partial Verification Skipping
VVS accelerates visual AR image generation by partially skipping verifications in speculative decoding, achieving 2.8x fewer target forward passes while preserving competitive quality.
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FluentAvatar: Flicker-Free Talking-Head Animation via Phoneme-Guided Autoregressive Modeling
Phoneme-guided autoregressive framework for talking-head animation that reduces inter-frame flicker via causal keyframe generation and timestamp-aware interpolation, outperforming diffusion baselines on FVD and a new BG-Flicker metric.
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PacTure: Efficient PBR Texture Generation on Packed Views with Visual Autoregressive Models
PacTure uses view packing and next-scale autoregressive prediction to generate consistent multi-view PBR textures faster than prior sequential or cross-attention methods.
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Distilling Specialized Orders for Visual Generation
OAR distills specialized generation orders from any-order AR models via self-distillation, improving FID from 2.39 to 2.17 on ImageNet 256x256 while preserving multi-task flexibility.
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T2I-FactualBench: Benchmarking the Factuality of Text-to-Image Models with Knowledge-Intensive Concepts
T2I-FactualBench is a new three-tier benchmark for factuality of knowledge-intensive concepts in T2I models, using multi-round VQA evaluation to show SOTA models need improvement.
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Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation
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PiD: Fast and High-Resolution Latent Decoding with Pixel Diffusion
PiD is a pixel diffusion decoder that performs latent-to-pixel conversion and 4-8x upsampling in one generative step, enabling early stopping of latent diffusion and achieving sub-second 2048x2048 decoding with claimed better fidelity than cascaded baselines.
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Vision Foundation Models as Generalist Tokenizers for Image Generation
VFMTok builds a generalist image tokenizer on frozen VFMs using adaptive quantization and semantic alignment, delivering gFID 1.36 for autoregressive and 1.25 for continuous generation on ImageNet with 3x faster convergence.
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HierEdit: Region-Aware Hierarchical Diffusion for Efficient High-Resolution Editing
HierEdit enables efficient 4K image editing via low-resolution proxy localization followed by hierarchical local-window diffusion that reuses unaltered regions as conditioning.
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InsightTok: Improving Text and Face Fidelity in Discrete Tokenization for Autoregressive Image Generation
InsightTok improves text and face fidelity in discrete image tokenization via content-aware perceptual losses, with gains transferring to autoregressive generation.
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Do multimodal models imagine electric sheep?
Fine-tuning VLMs to output action sequences for puzzles causes emergent internal visual representations that improve performance when integrated into reasoning.
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FlashAR: Efficient Post-Training Acceleration for Autoregressive Image Generation
FlashAR accelerates autoregressive image generation up to 22.9x by post-training a pre-trained raster-scan model with a complementary vertical head and dynamic fusion for two-way next-token prediction.
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CASCADE: Context-Aware Relaxation for Speculative Image Decoding
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MUSE: Resolving Manifold Misalignment in Visual Tokenization via Topological Orthogonality
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End-to-End Autoregressive Image Generation with 1D Semantic Tokenizer
An end-to-end autoregressive model with a jointly trained 1D semantic tokenizer achieves state-of-the-art FID 1.48 on ImageNet 256x256 generation without guidance.
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VibeToken: Scaling 1D Image Tokenizers and Autoregressive Models for Dynamic Resolution Generations
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Tuna-2: Pixel Embeddings Beat Vision Encoders for Multimodal Understanding and Generation
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Normalizing Flows with Iterative Denoising
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Generative Refinement Networks for Visual Synthesis
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Combating Pattern and Content Bias: Adversarial Feature Learning for Generalized AI-Generated Image Detection
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On the Robustness of Watermarking for Autoregressive Image Generation
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Differentiable Vector Quantization for Rate-Distortion Optimization of Generative Image Compression
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TC-AE: Unlocking Token Capacity for Deep Compression Autoencoders
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MAR-GRPO: Stabilized GRPO for AR-diffusion Hybrid Image Generation
MAR-GRPO stabilizes GRPO for AR-diffusion hybrids via multi-trajectory expectation and uncertainty-based token selection, yielding better visual quality, stability, and spatial understanding than baselines.
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Mirai: Autoregressive Visual Generation Needs Foresight
Mirai injects future-token foresight into autoregressive visual generators, accelerating convergence up to 10x and cutting ImageNet FID from 5.34 to 4.34.
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Emu3.5: Native Multimodal Models are World Learners
Emu3.5 is a native multimodal world model pre-trained on over 10 trillion vision-language tokens with next-token prediction, post-trained via reinforcement learning, and accelerated by Discrete Diffusion Adaptation for efficient interleaved generation and world exploration.
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Speculative Coupled Decoding for Training-Free Lossless Acceleration of Autoregressive Visual Generation
Speculative Coupled Decoding stabilizes draft sampling in Speculative Jacobi Decoding via an information-theoretic coupling step, delivering up to 4.2x image and 13.6x video speedups with no quality loss or training.
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Adversarial Concept Distillation for One-Step Diffusion Personalization
OPAD enables reliable high-quality personalization of one-step diffusion models via multi-step teacher distillation combined with adversarial alignment losses.
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VFM-VAE: Vision Foundation Models Can Be Good Tokenizers for Latent Diffusion Models
VFM-VAE uses a frozen VFM directly as LDM tokenizer via a custom decoder, reaching gFID 2.22 in 80 epochs and 1.62 after 640 epochs.
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ImgEdit: A Unified Image Editing Dataset and Benchmark
ImgEdit supplies 1.2 million curated edit pairs and a three-part benchmark that let a VLM-based model outperform prior open-source editors on adherence, quality, and detail preservation.
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FutureSightDrive: Thinking Visually with Spatio-Temporal CoT for Autonomous Driving
FSDrive uses a generated future scene frame as visual spatio-temporal CoT to improve VLA models for safer autonomous driving trajectory prediction.
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MMaDA: Multimodal Large Diffusion Language Models
MMaDA is a unified multimodal diffusion model using mixed chain-of-thought fine-tuning and a new UniGRPO reinforcement learning algorithm that outperforms specialized models in reasoning, understanding, and text-to-image tasks.
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Mogao: An Omni Foundation Model for Interleaved Multi-Modal Generation
Mogao presents a causal unified model with deep fusion, dual encoders, and interleaved position embeddings that achieves strong performance on multi-modal understanding, text-to-image generation, and coherent interleaved outputs including zero-shot editing.
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Autoregressive Video Generation without Vector Quantization
NOVA reformulates video generation as non-quantized autoregressive frame-by-frame temporal prediction combined with set-by-set spatial prediction, outperforming prior AR video models and some diffusion models in efficiency and quality.
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Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Need
Emu3 shows that next-token prediction on a unified discrete token space for text, images, and video lets a single transformer outperform task-specific models such as SDXL and LLaVA-1.6 in multimodal generation and perception.
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VILA-U: a Unified Foundation Model Integrating Visual Understanding and Generation
VILA-U unifies visual understanding and generation inside one autoregressive next-token prediction model, removing separate diffusion components while claiming near state-of-the-art results.
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WinTok: A Win-Win Hybrid Tokenizer via Decomposing Visual Understanding and Generation with Transferable Tokens
WinTok is a hybrid visual tokenizer that supplements pixel tokens with learnable semantic tokens distilled asymmetrically from foundation models to improve reconstruction, understanding, and generation.
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Mutual Enhancement Between Global Tokens and Patch Tokens: From Theory to Practice
TaTok is a theoretically grounded adaptive tokenization method that uses global tokens and cumulative conditional entropy filtering to reduce redundancy while improving reconstruction quality over fixed-rate patch tokenization.
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Visual Generation in the New Era: An Evolution from Atomic Mapping to Agentic World Modeling
Visual generation models are evolving from passive renderers to interactive agentic world modelers, but current systems lack spatial reasoning, temporal consistency, and causal understanding, with evaluations overemphasizing perceptual quality.
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UniGenDet: A Unified Generative-Discriminative Framework for Co-Evolutionary Image Generation and Generated Image Detection
UniGenDet unifies generative and discriminative models through symbiotic self-attention and detector-guided alignment to co-evolve image generation and authenticity detection.