Generative AI · advanced · concept 171 of 311 · Updated Nov 4, 2026
Diffusion Models
The architecture behind most modern image and video generators, including Stable Diffusion and the image models inside the major assistants. Works by learning to reverse a noise-adding process, start from pure noise, gradually denoise to create an image. Replaced GANs as the dominant generative approach.
Top AI contributors on this
- Ian GoodfellowFormerly Google DeepMind
- Alec RadfordIndependent / Thinking Machines Lab (adviser)
- Mira MuratiThinking Machines Lab
- Alexandr ZhavoronkovInsilico Medicine
- Shakir MohamedGoogle DeepMind
Key terms
DDPMNoise scheduleDenoisingU-Net backboneClassifier-free guidance
Learn these first
Videos
▶ Diffusion Models for AI Image Generation ↗
IBM Technology · YouTube
Guides and articles
CS236: Deep Generative Models ↗
Stanford
The Illustrated Stable Diffusion ↗
Jay Alammar
What are Diffusion Models? ↗
Lilian Weng
Courses, papers, and more
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