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Main Authors: Ashiq, Muhammad H., Arora, Samanyu, Harish, Abhinav N., Kharbanda, Ishaan, Tseng, Hung Yun, Chrysos, Grigorios G.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06831
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author Ashiq, Muhammad H.
Arora, Samanyu
Harish, Abhinav N.
Kharbanda, Ishaan
Tseng, Hung Yun
Chrysos, Grigorios G.
author_facet Ashiq, Muhammad H.
Arora, Samanyu
Harish, Abhinav N.
Kharbanda, Ishaan
Tseng, Hung Yun
Chrysos, Grigorios G.
contents We theoretically study the hallucination phenomena in two canonical diffusion samplers: the stochastic Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) and the deterministic Denoising Diffusion Implicit Model (DDIM). We analyze the reverse ODE (DDIM) and SDE (DDPM) for a Gaussian mixture target, proving that after a critical time $τ$, (a) DDIM can become stuck on the segment connecting the two nearest modes and (b) DDPM *stochasticity* helps it become unstuck from this region, thus avoiding hallucination. Our empirical validation verifies that DDPM has a significantly lower hallucination rate than DDIM when this region is entered. Building on our observations, we exhibit how using additional stochastic steps can help DDIM avoid hallucinations and offer new insights on how to design improved samplers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_06831
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Why DDIM Hallucinates More Than DDPM: A Theoretical Analysis of Reverse Dynamics
Ashiq, Muhammad H.
Arora, Samanyu
Harish, Abhinav N.
Kharbanda, Ishaan
Tseng, Hung Yun
Chrysos, Grigorios G.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
We theoretically study the hallucination phenomena in two canonical diffusion samplers: the stochastic Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) and the deterministic Denoising Diffusion Implicit Model (DDIM). We analyze the reverse ODE (DDIM) and SDE (DDPM) for a Gaussian mixture target, proving that after a critical time $τ$, (a) DDIM can become stuck on the segment connecting the two nearest modes and (b) DDPM *stochasticity* helps it become unstuck from this region, thus avoiding hallucination. Our empirical validation verifies that DDPM has a significantly lower hallucination rate than DDIM when this region is entered. Building on our observations, we exhibit how using additional stochastic steps can help DDIM avoid hallucinations and offer new insights on how to design improved samplers.
title Why DDIM Hallucinates More Than DDPM: A Theoretical Analysis of Reverse Dynamics
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06831