Improved Analysis of Score-based Generative Modeling: User-Friendly Bounds under Minimal Smoothness Assumptions

We give an improved theoretical analysis of score-based generative modeling. Under a score estimate with small $L^2$ error (averaged across timesteps), we provide efficient convergence guarantees for any data distribution with second-order moment, by either employing early stopping or assuming smoothness condition on the score function of the data distribution. Our result does not rely on any log-concavity or functional inequality assumption and has a logarithmic dependence on the smoothness. In particular, we show that under only a finite second moment condition, approximating the following in reverse KL divergence in $ε$-accuracy can be done in $\tilde O\left(\frac{d \log (1/δ)}ε\right)$ steps: 1) the variance-$δ$ Gaussian perturbation of any data distribution; 2) data distributions with $1/δ$-smooth score functions. Our analysis also provides a quantitative comparison between different discrete approximations and may guide the choice of discretization points in practice.