Glossary · Models & inference

VAE (Variational Autoencoder)

A latent-variable model trained with a reconstruction objective and a regularization term that keeps an approximate posterior close to a chosen prior. The reparameterization estimator allows gradients through stochastic latent sampling.

Common confusion

A VAE does not force every latent distribution to one fixed Gaussian; the exact prior and approximate posterior are modeling choices.

Related terms

Sources

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