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Towards a Mechanistic Explanation of Diffusion Model Generalization

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arxiv 2411.19339 v3 pith:7RS54ATO submitted 2024-11-28 cs.LG cs.AIcs.CV

Towards a Mechanistic Explanation of Diffusion Model Generalization

classification cs.LG cs.AIcs.CV
keywords networkdiffusiondenoisersacrossalgorithmsbehaviourcomparingdenoising
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We propose a simple, training-free mechanism which explains the generalization behaviour of diffusion models. By comparing pre-trained diffusion models to their theoretically optimal empirical counterparts, we identify a shared local inductive bias across a variety of network architectures. From this observation, we hypothesize that network denoisers generalize through localized denoising operations, as these operations approximate the training objective well over much of the training distribution. To validate our hypothesis, we introduce novel denoising algorithms which aggregate local empirical denoisers to replicate network behaviour. Comparing these algorithms to network denoisers across forward and reverse diffusion processes, our approach exhibits consistent visual similarity to neural network outputs, with lower mean squared error than previously proposed methods.

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Cited by 4 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. An exact information theory of generalization phase transitions in Bayesian diffusion models

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    Bayesian diffusion models memorize training data when mutual information between restricted observations and training data exceeds log dataset size, and generalize otherwise.

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    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Generative models learn rules before memorizing data, creating an innovation window whose width depends on dataset size and rule complexity, observed in both diffusion and autoregressive architectures.

  3. Local Diffusion Models and Phases of Data Distributions

    cs.LG 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    The paper introduces a phase framework for data distributions connected by local denoisers and demonstrates that reverse diffusion consists of trivial and data phases separated by a transition where local score functi...

  4. Principles and Practice of Deep Representation Learning: or a Mathematical Theory of Memory

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 3.0

    The book presents principles from optimization and information theory to explain deep network architectures and enable new interpretable models.