Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for learning visual concepts using neural networks. One of the methods includes receiving a new symbol input comprising one or more symbols from a vocabulary; and generating a new output image that depicts concepts referred to by the new symbol input, comprising: processing the new symbol input using a symbol encoder neural network to generate a new symbol encoder output for the new symbol input; sampling, from the distribution parameterized by the new symbol encoder output, a respective value for each of a plurality of visual factors; and processing a new image decoder input comprising the respective values for the visual factors using an image decoder neural network to generate the new output image.