Latent Space
A compressed, abstract map where a model represents concepts as coordinates — similar things sit close together, so kitten lives near cat and far from bulldozer. Diffusion models generate in latent space (working on a small compressed representation, not full pixels), which is why they are fast. For creators, latent space explains blending: prompts like 'a lion made of stained glass' work because the model can travel between the lion region and the stained-glass region and find a coherent point in between. Smooth morph animations are literally walks through latent space.