Encoder–Decoder Manifold Alignment for Idempotent Generation

Recently, several learning paradigms have been introduced to enforce idempotency in generative models. The goal of this property is to ensure that repeated application of a model leaves samples unchanged once they lie on the target data manifold. In this work, we explore enforcing idempotency in encoder--decoder models. We argue that a key reason for the failure of generative models on some tasks, such as editing, is a geometric mismatch between the manifolds learned by the encoder and decoder. The encoder projects inputs onto one latent manifold, while the decoder implicitly learns to reconstruct data from a different manifold. This discrepancy prevents the model from learning truly idempotent mappings. To address this issue, we propose a new training framework that explicitly closes this gap by forcing the encoder and decoder to learn consistent representations of the same underlying data manifold. By aligning the geometry of these components, our method encourages stable projections. Empirically, we show that our approach achieves significantly lower idempotency error and consistently regenerates identical outputs under repeated application, compared to existing methods. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework on both image generation and image editing tasks. Finally, we show that enforcing idempotency in this manner improves identity preservation and information stability, leading to more realistic and controllable generative editing models.