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Auteurs principaux: Chen, Yang, Xu, Xiaowei, Wang, Shuai, Zhu, Chenhui, Wen, Ruxue, Li, Xubin, Ge, Tiezheng, Wang, Limin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.22345
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author Chen, Yang
Xu, Xiaowei
Wang, Shuai
Zhu, Chenhui
Wen, Ruxue
Li, Xubin
Ge, Tiezheng
Wang, Limin
author_facet Chen, Yang
Xu, Xiaowei
Wang, Shuai
Zhu, Chenhui
Wen, Ruxue
Li, Xubin
Ge, Tiezheng
Wang, Limin
contents Normalizing Flows (NFs) are a class of generative models distinguished by a mathematically invertible architecture, where the forward pass transforms data into a latent space for density estimation, and the reverse pass generates new samples from this space. This characteristic creates an intrinsic synergy between representation learning and data generation. However, the generative quality of standard NFs is limited by poor semantic representations from log-likelihood optimization. To remedy this, we propose a novel alignment strategy that creatively leverages the invertibility of NFs: instead of regularizing the forward pass, we align the intermediate features of the generative (reverse) pass with representations from a powerful vision foundation model, demonstrating superior effectiveness over naive alignment. We also introduce a novel training-free, test-time optimization algorithm for classification, which provides a more intrinsic evaluation of the NF's embedded semantic knowledge. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that our approach accelerates the training of NFs by over 3.3$\times$, while simultaneously delivering significant improvements in both generative quality and classification accuracy. New state-of-the-art results for NFs are established on ImageNet 64$\times$64 and 256$\times$256. Our code is available at https://github.com/MCG-NJU/FlowBack.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_22345
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Flowing Backwards: Improving Normalizing Flows via Reverse Representation Alignment
Chen, Yang
Xu, Xiaowei
Wang, Shuai
Zhu, Chenhui
Wen, Ruxue
Li, Xubin
Ge, Tiezheng
Wang, Limin
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Normalizing Flows (NFs) are a class of generative models distinguished by a mathematically invertible architecture, where the forward pass transforms data into a latent space for density estimation, and the reverse pass generates new samples from this space. This characteristic creates an intrinsic synergy between representation learning and data generation. However, the generative quality of standard NFs is limited by poor semantic representations from log-likelihood optimization. To remedy this, we propose a novel alignment strategy that creatively leverages the invertibility of NFs: instead of regularizing the forward pass, we align the intermediate features of the generative (reverse) pass with representations from a powerful vision foundation model, demonstrating superior effectiveness over naive alignment. We also introduce a novel training-free, test-time optimization algorithm for classification, which provides a more intrinsic evaluation of the NF's embedded semantic knowledge. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that our approach accelerates the training of NFs by over 3.3$\times$, while simultaneously delivering significant improvements in both generative quality and classification accuracy. New state-of-the-art results for NFs are established on ImageNet 64$\times$64 and 256$\times$256. Our code is available at https://github.com/MCG-NJU/FlowBack.
title Flowing Backwards: Improving Normalizing Flows via Reverse Representation Alignment
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.22345