CoLoGen: Progressive Learning of Concept-Localization Duality for Unified Image Generation

TL;DR

CoLoGen introduces a progressive diffusion framework that learns and integrates concept and localization representations for unified image generation, enabling better handling of diverse visual tasks.

Contribution

It proposes a staged curriculum and the PRW module to reconcile concept-localization duality, improving unified image generation capabilities.

Findings

Achieves superior performance on editing and controllable generation tasks.

Effectively integrates concept and localization features across stages.

Provides a new representational perspective for unified image synthesis.

Abstract

Unified conditional image generation remains difficult because different tasks depend on fundamentally different internal representations. Some require conceptual understanding for semantic synthesis, while others rely on localization cues for spatial precision. Forcing these heterogeneous tasks to share a single representation leads to concept-localization representational conflict. To address this issue, we propose CoLoGen, a unified diffusion framework that progressively learns and reconciles this concept-localization duality. CoLoGen uses a staged curriculum that first builds core conceptual and localization abilities, then adapts them to diverse visual conditions, and finally refines their synergy for complex instruction-driven tasks. Central to this process is the Progressive Representation Weaving (PRW) module, which dynamically routes features to specialized experts and stably integrates their outputs across stages. Experiments on editing, controllable generation, and customized generation show that CoLoGen achieves competitive or superior performance, offering a principled representational perspective for unified image generation.