Learning to Validate Generative Models: a Goodness-of-Fit Approach

Generative models are increasingly central to scientific workflows, yet their systematic use and interpretation require a proper understanding of their limitations through rigorous validation. Classic approaches struggle with scalability, statistical power, or interpretability when applied to high-dimensional data, making it difficult to certify the reliability of these models in realistic, high-dimensional scientific settings. Here, we propose the use of the New Physics Learning Machine (NPLM), a learning-based approach to goodness-of-fit testing inspired by the Neyman–Pearson construction, to test generative networks trained on high-dimensional scientific data. We demonstrate the performance of NPLM for validation in two benchmark cases: generative models trained on mixtures of Gaussian models with increasing dimensionality, and a public end-to-end model, known as FlowSim, developed to generate high-energy physics collision events. We demonstrate that the NPLM can serve as a powerful validation method while also providing a means to diagnose sub-optimally modeled regions of the data

Recommended citation: Cappelli, P., Grosso, G., Letizia, M., Reyes-González, H., Zanetti, M. (2025). "Learning to Validate Generative Models: a Goodness-of-Fit Approach." arXiv:2511.09118.
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