By sampling from the latent space of an autoencoder and decoding the latent space samples to the original data space, any autoencoder can simply be turned into a generative model. For this to work, it is necessary to model the autoencoder's latent space with a distribution from which samples can be obtained. Several simple possibilities (kernel density estimates, Gaussian distribution) and more sophisticated ones (Gaussian mixture models, copula models, normalization flows) can be thought of and have been tried recently. This study aims to discuss, assess, and compare various techniques that can be used to capture the latent space so that an autoencoder can become a generative model while striving for simplicity. Among them, a new copula-based method, the Empirical Beta Copula Autoencoder, is considered. Furthermore, we provide insights into further aspects of these methods, such as targeted sampling or synthesizing new data with specific features.

通过从自动编码器的潜空间进行采样并将样本解码到原始数据空间，可以将任何自动编码器简单地转变为生成模型。本研究旨在讨论、评估和比较可以用于捕捉潜空间的各种技术，以使自动编码器成为生成模型，同时追求简单性。其中，考虑了一种基于copula的新方法，即经验Beta Copula自动编码器。此外，我们还提供了关于这些方法进一步方面的见解，例如有针对性的采样或合成具有特定特征的新数据。

学习非参数高维生成模型：经验贝塔-科普拉自动编码器