Discrete diffusion – Definition & Meaning

Definition of discrete diffusion

: a diffusion-model approach for categorical or other discrete data that learns to reverse a step-by-step corruption process applied to tokens, labels, graph elements, or similar noncontinuous values
- The molecule generator used discrete diffusion to add and remove graph edges through a learned denoising process.
- A discrete diffusion model can corrupt text by replacing or masking tokens and then learn to reconstruct the original sequence.

Origin & history

first known use2021

Discrete-state diffusion methods predate the modern diffusion-model boom, but the 2021 NeurIPS paper 'Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spaces' established the influential D3PM framework for categorical data and helped standardize the modern term.

Test yourself

Which of these is the meaning of discrete diffusion?

Related terms

diffusion model a generative model that creates images (or audio or video) by starting from random noise and… generative AI AI that creates new content, such as text, images, music, video, or code, in response to a… sampling the way a model picks each next token from its list of possible choices, which decides how… transformer a neural network design that processes a whole sequence at once and uses attention to work out… training data the collection of examples (text, images, code, audio, and so on) that a model learns from

Cite this entry

"Discrete diffusion." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/discrete-diffusion/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.