guidance

Definition

Steering a generative process toward a condition at inference time rather than by retraining. In diffusion models the strength is a single knob, the guidance scale, and it buys prompt fidelity at the cost of diversity — push it high and outputs match the prompt closely but collapse toward a few saturated modes. That it is an inference-time control is the practical appeal: one model, many behaviours, no additional training.

Explainers using this term

• CFG and Samplers — What the "Strength" Knob in Generative AI Really DoesClassifier-Free Diffusion Guidance