Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 14: Focus Session: Physics of AI I (joint session SOE/DY)

SOE 14.1: Hauptvortrag

Donnerstag, 12. März 2026, 09:30–10:00, GÖR/0226

Generative AI and diffusion models: a statistical physics approach — •Giulio Biroli — Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France

Generative AI represents a groundbreaking development within the broader *Machine Learning Revolution,* significantly influencing technology, science, and society. In this colloquium, I will focus on the state-of-the-art *diffusion models*, which are currently used to generate images, videos, and sounds. They are very fascinating algorithms for physicists, as they are very much connected to concepts from stochastic thermodynamics, particularly time-reversed Langevin dynamics. These diffusion models start from a simple white noise input and make it evolve through a Langevin process to generate complex outputs such as images, videos, and sounds. I will show that statistical physics provides principles and methods to characterise this generation process. Specifically, I will discuss how phenomena such as the transition from memorization to generalization and the emergence of features can be understood through the lens of symmetry breaking, phase transitions, slow dynamics, and methods used to study disordered systems.

Keywords: Generative AI; Statistical Physics; Out of equilibrium physics