Follow the Mean: Reference-Guided Flow Matching [R]

This paper presents a method for controllable generation in flow matching models by adapting them through reference examples. The key insight is that the velocity field in flow matching is determined by the conditional endpoint mean, so shifting this mean steers the generative flow toward different outputs. Reference-Mean Guidance is a training-free approach that computes endpoint corrections from reference examples and applies them to frozen models, enabling control over color, identity, style, and structure.

Source: r/MachineLearning | 2026-05-14