Kilian Fatras

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Yanlei Zhang

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (voir plus)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized conditional flow matching (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that when the true OT plan is available, our OT-CFM method approximates dynamic OT. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr\"odinger bridge inference.

2023-02-01

ArXiv (prépublication)

arxiv.org

Conditional Flow Matching: Simulation-Free Dynamic Optimal Transport

Yanlei Zhang

Continuous normalizing ﬂows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have thus far been held back by limitations i… (voir plus)n their simulation-based maximum likelihood training. In this paper, we introduce a new technique called conditional ﬂow matching (CFM), a simulation-free training objective for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic ﬂow in diffusion models but enjoys the efﬁcient inference of deterministic ﬂow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, our CFM objec-tive does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. Based on this new objective, we also introduce optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler ﬂows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr ¨ odinger bridge inference. Code is available at https://github.com/atong01/ conditional-flow-matching .

2023-01-01

arXiv.org (prépublication)

doi.org

Conditional Flow Matching: Simulation-Free Dynamic Optimal Transport

Yanlei Zhang