ResearchResearch paperImage, Video & 3D Generation · Computer Vision1 source · Oct 8, 2026

Normalizing Trajectory Models

We introduce Normalizing Trajectory Models (NTM), which models each reverse step as an expressive conditional normalizing flow with exact likelihood training.

Key points

  • Diffusion-based models decompose sampling into many small Gaussian denoising steps, an assumption that breaks down when generation is compressed to a few coarse transitions.
  • Its exact trajectory likelihood further enables self-distillation: a lightweight denoiser trained on the score function induced by the model itself produces high-quality samples in four steps.
  • On text-to-image benchmarks, NTM matches or outperforms strong image generation baselines in just four sampling steps while uniquely retaining exact likelihood over the generative trajectory.
  • In this work, we further advance the state of Normalizing Flow generative models by introducing iterative TARFlow (iTARFlow).

Sources (1)

  • [1]Normalizing Trajectory Models
    Apple Machine Learning Research · Oct 8, 12:00 AM
    We introduce Normalizing Trajectory Models (NTM), which models each reverse step as an expressive conditional normalizing flow with exact likelihood training.
    Diffusion-based models decompose sampling into many small Gaussian denoising steps, an assumption that breaks down when generation is compressed to a few coarse transitions.

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.

Before this

  1. Oct 7, 2026Enabling Preference-driven Unlearning in Few-step Distilled Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
  2. Oct 7, 2026MUNITE: Unified Multimodal Latent Inference for Any-to-Any Multimodal Generation
  3. Oct 7, 2026Iris-3B: Going Beyond the Latent with Pixel-Space Diffusion Training, Conversion and Fine-Tuning
  4. Oct 7, 2026MIMESIS: Learning User Simulators as Training Environments for Interactive Agents
  5. Oct 6, 2026Consistent Distribution Matching for Data-Free Diffusion Distillation
  6. Oct 6, 2026Self-Retrospection Distillation: Turning Post-hoc Experiences into Prior Foresight

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