Diffusion Model Clearly Explained!

How does AI artwork work? Understanding the tech behind the rise of AI-generated art.

Jason Allen’s AI-generated work, “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” won first place in the digital category at the Colorado State Fair. [1]

The rise of the Diffusion Model can be regarded as the main factor for the recent breakthrough in the AI generative artworks field.

In this article, I’m going to explain how it works with illustrative diagrams.

Updates

• [15-Jun-2023] Added detailed derivation of the mean μ̃ₜ of q(xₜ₋₁|xₜ, x₀) for the stepwise denoising term in Loss Function.

Table of Contents

- Overview
- Forward Diffusion Process
— Closed-Form Formula
- Reverse Diffusion Process
— Loss Function
— Simplified Loss
- The U-Net Model
— Dataset
— Training
— Reverse Diffusion
- Summary
- Appendix
- References

Overview