Implementations identify a small set of independent, salient features from an input signal. The salient features may be used for conditioning a generative network, making the generative network robust to noise. The salient features may facilitate compression and data transmission. An example method includes receiving an input signal and extracting salient features for the input signal by providing the input signal to an encoder trained to extract salient features. The salient features may be independent and have a sparse distribution. The encoder may be configured to generate almost identical features from two input signals a system designer deems equivalent. The method also includes conditioning a generative network using the salient features. In some implementations, the method may also include extracting a plurality of time sequences from the input signal and extracting the salient features for each time sequence.