I didn't read the referenced 2017 paper yet, but mapping the training data to noise (gaussian and/or other) is exactly what the RevNet paper does, with the advantage of deterministic reversibility such that the trained RevNet is also generative (without having to do gradient descent for each generated image)
The intro to the paper has a nice comparison to other similar methods (generative and non-generative) and the blog post linked in this article by inFERNCe https://www.inference.vc/unsupervised-learning-by-predicting... has a nice comparison at the end to different unsupervised methods and where this method adds novelty (or doesn't!)