Adaptive Classifier-Free Guidance via Dynamic Low-Confidence Masking
Authors: name: Pengxiang Li; name: Shilin Yan; name: Joey Tsai; name: Renrui Zhang; name: Ruichuan An; name: Ziyu Guo; name: Xiaowei Gao
Published: 2025-05-26 16:40:22

Abstract: Classifier-Free Guidance (CFG) significantly enhances controllability in
generative models by interpolating conditional and unconditional predictions.
However, standard CFG often employs a static unconditional input, which can be
suboptimal for iterative generation processes where model uncertainty varies
dynamically. We introduce Adaptive Classifier-Free Guidance (A-CFG), a novel
method that tailors the unconditional input by leveraging the model's
instantaneous predictive confidence. At each step of an iterative (masked)
diffusion language model, A-CFG identifies tokens in the currently generated
sequence for which the model exhibits low confidence. These tokens are
temporarily re-masked to create a dynamic, localized unconditional input. This
focuses CFG's corrective influence precisely on areas of ambiguity, leading to
more effective guidance. We integrate A-CFG into a state-of-the-art masked
diffusion language model and demonstrate its efficacy. Experiments on diverse
language generation benchmarks show that A-CFG yields substantial improvements
over standard CFG, achieving, for instance, a 3.9 point gain on GPQA. Our work
highlights the benefit of dynamically adapting guidance mechanisms to model
uncertainty in iterative generation.