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Making image generators prefer better outputs the right way

Kesong Li, Yixuan Xu, Kuo-kun Tseng, Weiyi Lu, Kan Liu, Tao Lan

May 20, 2026

Getting image generators to prefer human-approved outputs requires different math than language models. The authors show standard DPO uses the wrong utility function for image generation—it's too aggressive. Linear-DPO swaps in a gentler linear utility and improves results on Stable Diffusion 1.5, SDXL, and SD3-Medium, making alignment work across both major generative model architectures.
Published as Linear-DPO: Linear Direct Preference Optimization for Diffusion and Flow-Matching Generative Models arXiv:2605.21123
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