On the Collapse of Generative Paths: A Criterion and Correction for Diffusion Steering
This paper identifies "Marginal Path Collapse" as a critical failure mode in inference-time steering of diffusion models caused by mismatched noise schedules or negative exponents, and proposes the Adaptive Path Correction with Exponents (ACE) framework to mathematically guarantee path existence and significantly improve performance in complex compositional tasks like drug design and image generation.