They do!
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.18777
But that doesn't mean a frequentist views a VAE as a generative model!
Putting it another way, Gaussian processes originated as a frequentist technique! But to a frequentist they are not generative.
Ooh good find, thanks for the link. This will be my bedtime reading for this week :)
Ooh good find, thanks for the link. This will be my bedtime reading for this week :)