Generative topographic map

Generative topographic map (GTM) is a machine learning method that is a probabilistic counterpart of the self-organizing map (SOM), is probably convergent and does not require a shrinking neighborhood or a decreasing step size. It is a generative model: the data is assumed to arise by first probabilistically picking a point in a low-dimensional space, mapping the point to the observed high-dimensional input space (via a smooth function), then adding noise in that space.

Source: Wikipedia — Generative topographic map (CC BY-SA 4.0)