Papers › Empowering Diffusion Models on the Embedding Space for Text Generation

Empowering Diffusion Models on the Embedding Space for Text Generation

19 Dec 2022arXiv:2212.09412archive 2025-07-28

Zhujin Gao, Junliang Guo, Xu Tan, Yongxin Zhu, Fang Zhang, Jiang Bian, Linli Xu

Diffusion models have achieved state-of-the-art synthesis quality on both visual and audio tasks, and recent works further adapt them to textual data by diffusing on the embedding space. In this paper, we conduct systematic studies of the optimization challenges encountered with both the embedding space and the denoising model, which have not been carefully explored. Firstly, the data distribution is learnable for embeddings, which may lead to the collapse of the embedding space and unstable training. To alleviate this problem, we propose a new objective called the anchor loss which is more efficient than previous methods. Secondly, we find the noise levels of conventional schedules are insufficient for training a desirable denoising model while introducing varying degrees of degeneration in consequence. To address this challenge, we propose a novel framework called noise rescaling. Based on the above analysis, we propose Difformer, an embedding diffusion model based on Transformer. Experiments on varieties of seminal text generation tasks show the effectiveness of the proposed methods and the superiority of Difformer over previous state-of-the-art embedding diffusion baselines.

PaperPDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2212.09412")

Code

Syntology Ran 6 of 11 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 5 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 3 ran · honoured contract; 2 ran · our draft was wrong; 1 ran with no contract checked.

By repository: official repository: 11 samples from 1 repository, 6 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

zhjgao/difformer officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorchMIT report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

11 samples harvested; 6 ran; 3 honoured the contract we drafted; 5 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

3ran · honoured contract
2ran · our draft was wrong
1ran
5unverified

Licence: 0 of the 11 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from zhjgao/difformer. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

approx_standard_normal_cdf zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/losses.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · cfd76fd0d89574a4 · report
betas_for_alpha_bar zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/gaussian_diffusion.py official repository ran · honoured contract MIT (permissive) · 2ab2316ac6fdd869 · report
discretized_gaussian_log_likelihood zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/losses.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong MIT (permissive) · cd33283d615fb3d7 · report
get_named_beta_schedule zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/gaussian_diffusion.py official repository ran · honoured contract MIT (permissive) · a086d6286a40b889 · report
make_output_format zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/logger.py official repository ran MIT (permissive) · bcd8b4acab199405 · report
normal_kl zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/losses.py official repository ran · honoured contract fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · cf2798b666b231ca · report
build_ffn zhjgao/difformer/difformer/utils.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 45a64d31d754e5e9 · report
make_master_params zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/fp16_util.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · a863803cdd5f3ce6 · report
mpi_weighted_mean zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/logger.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · e515a67f7f32e76d · report
profile zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/logger.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 0c6607473a4c4c55 · report
unflatten_master_params zhjgao/difformer/improved_diffusion/fp16_util.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 30e43bcf12d042b0 · report

Tasks

DenoisingMachine TranslationText GenerationText Summarization

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

Absolute Position EncodingsAdamAttentionBPEDense ConnectionsDiffusionDropoutLabel SmoothingLayer NormalizationLinear LayerMulti-Head AttentionPosition-Wise Feed-Forward LayerResidual ConnectionSoftmaxTransformer

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections