arXiv · 2512.22374
Self-Evaluation Unlocks Any-Step Text-to-Image Generation
Abstract
We introduce the Self-Evaluating Model (Self-E), a novel, from-scratch training approach for text-to-image generation that supports any-step inference. Self-E learns from data similarly to a Flow Matching model, while simultaneously employing a novel self-evaluation mechanism: it evaluates its own generated samples using its current score estimates, effectively serving as a dynamic self-teacher. Unlike traditional diffusion or flow models, it does not rely solely on local supervision, which typically necessitates many inference steps. Unlike distillation-based approaches, it does not require a pretrained teacher. This combination of instantaneous local learning and self-driven global matching bridges the gap between the two paradigms, enabling the training of a high-quality text-to-image model from scratch that excels even at very low step counts. Extensive experiments on large-scale text-to-image benchmarks show that Self-E not only excels in few-step generation, but is also competitive with state-of-the-art Flow Matching models at 50 steps. We further find that its performance improves monotonically as inference steps increase, enabling both ultra-fast few-step generation and high-quality long-trajectory sampling within a single unified model. To our knowledge, Self-E is the first from-scratch, any-step text-to-image model, offering a unified framework for efficient and scalable generation.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Xin Yu, Xiaojuan Qi, Zhengqi Li, Kai Zhang, Richard Zhang, Zhe Lin, Eli Shechtman, Tianyu Wang, Yotam Nitzan. 2025-12-26. Self-Evaluation Unlocks Any-Step Text-to-Image Generation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22374
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.