Towards Better Optimization For Listwise Preference in Diffusion Models

Abstract: Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has proven effectiveness for aligning text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models with human preferences. Although Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is widely adopted for its computational efficiency and avoidance of explicit reward modeling, its applications to diffusion models have primarily relied on pairwise preferences. The precise optimization of listwise preferences remains largely unaddressed. In practice, human feedback on image preferences often contains implicit ranked information, which conveys more precise human preferences than pairwise comparisons. In this work, we propose Diffusion-LPO, a simple and effective framework for Listwise Preference Optimization in diffusion models with listwise data. Given a caption, we aggregate user feedback into a ranked list of images and derive a listwise extension of the DPO objective under the Plackett-Luce model. Diffusion-LPO enforces consistency across the entire ranking by encouraging each sample to be preferred over all of its lower-ranked alternatives. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of Diffusion-LPO across various tasks, including text-to-image generation, image editing, and personalized preference alignment. Diffusion-LPO consistently outperforms pairwise DPO baselines on visual quality and preference alignment.