CVPR 2026 Tutorial • Colorado Convention Center, Room 201 • June 3, 9 am - 12 pm

Accelerated Diffusion Models:
From Theory to Interactive World Models

Overview

How can we make diffusion models fast enough for real-time interactive applications?

Diffusion models and flow-based methods have revolutionized generative learning in the visual domain, setting new standards for image, video, and 3D content creation. However, as the field shifts toward interactive applications—such as real-time editing, world models, and embodied AI—the need for low-latency feedback has become critical. Currently, the high computational cost of iterative sampling hinders real-world deployment. While various acceleration techniques exist, the lack of a unified resource makes it difficult to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

To address this challenge, this tutorial offers a practice-oriented course designed to equip researchers and practitioners with the tools to accelerate diffusion pipelines, supported by the open-source FastGen library. The curriculum covers three primary areas: general sampling acceleration, training-based distillation for efficient few-step samplers, and applications in video and interactive world models.

Organizers & Presenters

Schedule

9:00-9:50 am General Paradigms to Accelerating Diffusion Models
Covering advanced differential equation solvers, low-dimensional latent diffusions, improved noising processes, and architecture-based accelerations.
Arash Vahdat
10 min break
10:00-10:50 am Accelerating Diffusion Models with Step Distillation
Covering trajectory-based distillation approaches (such as knowledge distillation, consistency models, and flow maps) and distribution distillation methods (such as adversarial distillation and variational score distillation).
Julius Berner
10 min break
11:00-11:50 am From Images to Interactive World Models
Covering key challenges in video-based interactive world models (such as real-time sampling, long-context memory, and block-wise causal generation) and representative approaches (such as CausVid, Self-Forcing, and APT2).
Weili Nie