Your VAR Model is Secretly an Efficient and Explainable Generative Classifier

ArXi:2510.12060v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Generative classifiers, which leverage conditional generative models for classification, have recently nstrated desirable properties such as robustness to distribution shifts. However, recent progress in this area has been largely driven by diffusion-based models, whose substantial computational cost severely limits scalability. This exclusive focus on diffusion-based methods has also constrained our understanding of generative classifiers.