Generative AI in the age of quantum computing: A taxonomy, architectural elements and future directions

Generative AI has emerged as a transformative paradigm for diverse applications, yet the escalating scale of modern models exposes critical computational and memory bottlenecks in classical hardware. This paper investigates the intersection of quantum computing and generative artificial intelligence (QGAI) to address these limitations and scale modern generative models. As models grow to billions of parameters, classical systems face bottlenecks in memory, energy, and training efficiency, while quantum computing offers exponential representational benefits for high-dimensional data. The paper analyzes five core quantum generative architectures-Quantum Circuit Born Machines, Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks, Quantum Boltzmann Machines, Quantum Variational Autoencoders, and Quantum Diffusion models, highlighting their design principles, learning mechanisms, and applications. QGAI models have demonstrated significant promise in domains such as drug discovery, human-machine interaction, IoT security, and financial modelling. Despite these advances, QGAI remains constrained by qubit noise, barren plateaus, and integration challenges. We conclude by identifying ten open research challenges and propose directions for achieving scalable, interpretable, and energy-efficient quantum generative learning.