Abstract:Flow-based models have proven successful for time-series generation, particularly when defined in lower-dimensional latent spaces that enable efficient sampling. However, how to design latent representations with desirable equivariance properties for time-series generative modelling remains underexplored. In this work, we propose a latent flow-matching framework in which equivariance is explicitly encouraged through a simple regularisation of a pre-trained autoencoder. Specifically, we introduce an equivariance loss that enforces consistency between transformed signals and their reconstructions, and use it to fine-tune latent spaces with respect to basic time-series transformations such as translation and amplitude scaling. We show that these equivariance-regularised latent spaces improve generation quality while preserving the computational advantages of latent flow models. Experiments on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that our approach consistently outperforms existing diffusion-based baselines in standard time-series generation metrics, while achieving orders-of-magnitude faster sampling. These results highlight the practical benefits of incorporating geometric inductive biases into latent generative models for time series.
Abstract:Score-based generative models (SBM), also known as diffusion models, are the de facto state of the art for image synthesis. Despite their unparalleled performance, SBMs have recently been in the spotlight for being tricked into creating not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content, such as violent images and non-consensual nudity. Current approaches that prevent unsafe generation are based on the models' own knowledge, and the majority of them require fine-tuning. This article explores the use of external sources for ensuring safe outputs in SBMs. Our safe-for-work (SFW) sampler implements a Conditional Trajectory Correction step that guides the samples away from undesired regions in the ambient space using multimodal models as the source of conditioning. Furthermore, using Contrastive Language Image Pre-training (CLIP), our method admits user-defined NSFW classes, which can vary in different settings. Our experiments on the text-to-image SBM Stable Diffusion validate that the proposed SFW sampler effectively reduces the generation of explicit content while being competitive with other fine-tuning-based approaches, as assessed via independent NSFW detectors. Moreover, we evaluate the impact of the SFW sampler on image quality and show that the proposed correction scheme comes at a minor cost with negligible effect on samples not needing correction. Our study confirms the suitability of the SFW sampler towards aligned SBM models and the potential of using model-agnostic conditioning for the prevention of unwanted images.