RL for Image Generation

RL: Reinforcement Learning

Follow this topic Ask about this topic

Momentum

8 papers in the last four weeks, against 1 the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

Jul 13Week of Sep 28

Latest papers 53

All topics

Visual Jev Rewards: Reference-Bound Verification for Multi-Subject Image Generation
Oct 7, 2026Baoteng Li, Wenzhuo Wu, Kongming Liang +1Reward Modeling Image Generation Evaluation
School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications1 · Beijing Key Laboratory of Multimodal Data Intelligent Perception and Governance2
MEND: RL For Flow Models via Proximal Velocity Matching
Oct 5, 2026Shreshth Saini, Neil Birkbeck, Yilin Wang +2Flow Matching RL for Image Generation
The University of Texas at Austin · Google · University of Colorado Boulder
ExploreNet: Learning Where to Explore in Diffusion GRPO
Sep 29, 2026Shuyue Stella Li, Xiaochuang Han, Yulia Tsvetkov +1Diffusion Model Fine-Tuning RL Exploration
University of Washington
Decompose Radicals, Then Reward: Fine-Grained Inspection for Accurate Chinese Text Rendering
Sep 29, 2026Yazhen Xie, Xingsong Ye, Zhineng ChenT2I Generation RL for Image Generation
Institute of Trustworthy Embodied AI, Fudan University · Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multimodal Embodied AI
Learning Native Reflection in Unified Models with Interleaved Reinforcement Learning
Sep 28, 2026Yijia Fan, Ziqi Huang, Zhongang Cai +5Unified Multimodal Models Image Generation
Nanyang Technological University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · The University of Tokyo
Verifiable Visual Rewards Transfer from Synthetic Scenes to Natural Prompts
Sep 28, 2026Shuyue Stella Li, Xiaochuang Han, Yulia Tsvetkov +1Compositional T2I Generation RL for Image Generation
University of Washington
Timestep Weighting: A Hidden Key to Effective ELBO-Based Flow-Matching RL
Sep 26, 2026Qinwei Ma, Jingzhe Shi, Simin Fan +2RL for Image Generation Adaptive Loss Weighting
College of AI, Tsinghua University · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University · EPFL +1
WTF?! Simulation-Free Reinforcement Learning with Wasserstein-Tilted Flow Maps
Sep 22, 2026Abbas Mammadov, Jerry Y. Huang, Justin Lin +5Reinforcement Learning Generative Flow Networks
University of Oxford · Carnegie Mellon University
$λ$ -Controlled GRPO: Turning Flow-Matching Ratio Instability into a Budgeted Resource
Sep 18, 2026Yufeng Wang, Parivesh Priye, Meeshawn Marathe +1Flow Matching T2I Generation
Stony Brook University · Georgia Institute of Technology · Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Balancing Emotional Alignment and Semantic Consistency in Image Generation via Reinforcement Learning with Valence-Arousal Anchoring
Sep 14, 2026Jisheng Dang, Zhenxuan Wang, Bin Li +3Conditional Image Generation Image Generation
School of Information Science & Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China · School of Environmental and Spatial Informatics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China · College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China +2
DreOPD: Degraded-Reference Extrapolative On-Policy Distillation for Flow-matching Models
Aug 10, 2026Mingfeng Lin, Chengfei Cai, Lin Xu +2Flow Matching RL for Image Generation
Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) · Zhejiang University · Harbin Institute of Technology
JustLLMGRPO: Radiographic Control for Chest X-Ray Generation
Aug 8, 2026Pengxiang Cai, Xiaohan Li, Anglin Liu +3T2I Generation RL for Image Generation
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
LC-GRPO: Bridging Train-Inference Gap for Flow-Based GRPO with Langevin Correction
Aug 6, 2026Yingqing Guo, Hui Yuan, Zijian He +2RL for Video Generation RL for Image Generation
ToolArtist: Tool-Using Unified Multimodal Models for Agentic Image Generation
Aug 5, 2026Jiahao Zhao, Xiaomin Yu, Zhongxiang Sun +5Unified Multimodal Models Agentic Image Generation
1RUC · 2HKUST(GZ) · 3NUS +1
PRISM: Prompt Refinement via Image-grounded Self-rewarding Mechanism for Text-to-Image Generation
Jul 27, 2026Guo Tang, HongJie Luo, Tianxu Wang +2T2I Generation RL for Image Generation
Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · Sun Yat-sen University · South China University of Technology +1
ExpertVerse: A General-Purpose Benchmark for Expert-Level Reasoning in Knowledge-Intensive Visual Synthesis
Jul 21, 2026Yuan Wang, Yongchao Du, Mengting Chen +4Image Generation RL for Image Generation
1Alibaba Group · 2Tsinghua University · 3Johns Hopkins University‌
Multi-Axis Max@K Reinforcement Learning for Representative Diversity in Text-to-Image Generation
Jul 16, 2026Ku Onoda, Paavo Parmas, Hiroki Furuta +4T2I Generation RL for Image Generation
The University of Tokyo
Read It Back: Pretrained MLLMs Are Zero-Shot Reward Models for Text-to-Image Generation
Jul 13, 2026Runhui Huang, Qihui Zhang, Zhe Liu +3T2I Generation Multimodal Reward Modeling
The University of Hong Kong · Peking University · ByteDance Seed
Optimizing Visual Generative Models via Distribution-wise Rewards
Jul 2, 2026Ruihang Li, Mengde Xu, Shuyang Gu +4Diffusion Model Fine-Tuning RL for Image Generation
University of Science and Technology of China · Shanghai Innovation Institute · Hunyuan Frontier Lab, Tencent +1
Arena-T2I Hard: Benchmarking and Improving Faithfulness with Dependency-Aware Checklist
Jun 30, 2026Yuanhao Ban, Tong Xie, Sohyun An +6Reward Modeling Compositional T2I Generation
1Arena Intelligence Inc · 2UCLA
NormGuard: Reward-Preserving Norm Constraints in Flow-Matching Reinforcement Learning
Jun 26, 2026Tianlin Pan, Lianyu Pang, Cheng Da +4Flow Matching RL for Image Generation
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Kuaishou Technology · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
PortraitGen: Exemplar-Driven GRPO with Dual-Reward Guidance for Photorealistic Portrait Generation
Jun 25, 2026Xiaomin Li, Qian Liang, Yinan Li +5Group Relative Policy Optimization Image Generation
Dalian University of Technology · University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · Zhejiang University +1
SpatialFlow-GRPO: Where Spatial Credit Drives Image Editing
Jun 25, 2026Yankai Yang, Yancheng Long, Wei Chen +7Reward Modeling Group Relative Policy Optimization
Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · Kuaishou Technology
DivRL: Disentangled Self-Similarity Rewards for Diverse Subject-Driven Generation
Jun 22, 2026Qian Wang, Zhenyu Li, Abdelrahman Eldesokey +1Subject-Driven Image Generation Identity-Preserving Image Generation
KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Balancing Performance and Diversity in GRPO Autoregressive Text-to-Image Post-Training
Jun 19, 2026Yuanhao Chiang, Hongbo Duan, Chunru Yang +3T2I Generation Group Relative Policy Optimization
Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University
The Reward Was in Your Data All Along: Correcting Flow Matching with Discriminator-Guided RL
Jun 17, 2026Nicolas Beltran-Velez, Felix Friedrich, Zhang Xiaofeng +4Flow Matching Reinforcement Learning
FAIR at Meta · Columbia University · Mila – Québec AI Institute +3
Spotlight: Synergizing Seed Exploration and Spot GPUs for DiT RL Post-Training
Jun 17, 2026Ruiqi Lai, Dakai An, Wei Gao +6Diffusion Transformer RL for Image Generation
NTU Singapore · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Alibaba Group
InterleaveThinker: Reinforcing Agentic Interleaved Generation
Jun 11, 2026Dian Zheng, Harry Lee, Manyuan Zhang +4Agentic Image Generation Multimodal Generation
1CUHK MMLab · 2Meituan · 3CUHK IMIXR
Flow-DPPO: Divergence Proximal Policy Optimization for Flow Matching Models
Jun 9, 2026Bowen Ping, Xiangxin Zhou, Penghui Qi +3RL for Video Generation RL for Image Generation
Xi’an Jiaotong University · Tencent Hunyuan · National University of Singapore
AdaGRPO: A Capability-Aware Adaptive Enhancement for Flow-based GRPO
Jun 5, 2026Jiazi Bu, Pengyang Ling, Yujie Zhou +8T2I Generation Group Relative Policy Optimization
1Shanghai Jiao Tong University · 2S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University · 3Shanghai AI Laboratory +7
Guidance Contrastive Token Credit Assignment for Discrete Policy Optimization
May 28, 2026Shufan Li, Konstantinos Kallidromitis, Akash Gokul +2Token-Level Credit Assignment RL for Language Model Reasoning
UCLA · Panasonic AI Research · NVIDIA
AdvantageFlow: Regularized Advantage-Weighted RL in Flow Models
May 25, 2026Branislav Kveton, Anup Rao, Subhojyoti Mukherjee +2Rectified Flow RL for Image Generation
Adobe Research
HoloFair: Unified T2I Fairness Evaluation and Fair-GRPO Debiasing
May 23, 2026Ruyi Chen, Lu Zhou, Xiaogang Xu +3T2I Generation Algorithmic Fairness
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics · Collaborative Innovation Center of Novel Software Technology and Industrialization · School of Software Technology, Zhejiang University, Ningbo, China +1
RankE: End-to-End Post-Training for Discrete Text-to-Image Generation with Decoder Co-Evolution
May 20, 2026Siyong Jian, Siyuan Li, Luyuan Zhang +5T2I Generation RL for Image Generation
1Westlake University · 2Zhejiang University · 3Tsinghua University +2
Benchmarking and Evolving Reason-Reflect-Rectify for Reflective Visual Generation
May 19, 2026Junjie Wang, Xinghua Lou, Jason Li +8Image Generation Compositional T2I Generation
Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · University of Science and Technology of China · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute +5
Generation Navigator: A State-Aware Agentic Framework for Image Generation
May 18, 2026Jinming Liu, Ruoyu Feng, Yuqi Wang +2T2I Generation Agentic Image Generation
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Independent · Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China
Curriculum Group Policy Optimization: Adaptive Sampling for Unleashing the Potential of Text-to-Image Generation
May 18, 2026Baoteng Li, Xianghao Zang, Xinran Wang +8Group Relative Policy Optimization Curriculum RL
School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications1 · Beijing Key Laboratory of Multimodal Data Intelligent Perception and Governance3 · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom2
Sketch Then Paint: Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Multi-Modal Large Language Models
May 16, 2026Siqi Luo, Jianghan Shen, Yi Xin +9Hierarchical RL Group Relative Policy Optimization
1Shanghai Jiao Tong University · 2Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory · 3Nanjing University +2
Unlocking Complex Visual Generation via Closed-Loop Verified Reasoning
May 14, 2026Hanbo Cheng, Limin Lin, Ruo Zhang +2Image Generation Compositional T2I Generation
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) · 2Independent Researcher
When Policy Entropy Constraint Fails: Preserving Diversity in Flow-based RLHF via Perceptual Entropy
May 12, 2026Xiaofeng Tan, Jun Liu, Bin-Bin Gao +5Flow Matching Generative Modeling
Southeast University · Tencent Youtu Lab · Southern University of Science and Technology
Auto-Rubric as Reward: From Implicit Preferences to Explicit Multimodal Generative Criteria
May 8, 2026Juanxi Tian, Fengyuan Liu, Jiaming Han +6Policy Optimization Multimodal Reward Modeling
1Nanyang Technological University · 2Ant Group · 3MMLab, The Chinese University of Hong Kong +1
Flow-OPD: On-Policy Distillation for Flow Matching Models
May 8, 2026Zhen Fang, Wenxuan Huang, Yu Zeng +8Diffusion Model Alignment Flow Matching
University of Science and Technology of China · University of California, Los Angeles · 3The Chinese University of Hong Kong +1
POCA: Pareto-Optimal Curriculum Alignment for Visual Text Generation
Apr 27, 2026Yaohou Fan, Qingzhong Wang, Yongsong Huang +3Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning RL for Image Generation
Tohoku University · Amazon Web Services
ParetoSlider: Diffusion Models Post-Training for Continuous Reward Control
Apr 22, 2026Shelly Golan, Michael Finkelson, Ariel Bereslavsky +2Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning RL for Image Generation
Tel Aviv University · Lightricks · Adobe Research
UDM-GRPO: Stable and Efficient Group Relative Policy Optimization for Uniform Discrete Diffusion Models
Apr 20, 2026Jiaqi Wang, Haoge Deng, Ting Pan +5T2I Generation Group Relative Policy Optimization
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence
FiRe: Fine-grained Multimodal Reasoning for Enhanced Image Generation
Apr 15, 2026Yongjin Kim, Yoonjin Oh, Yerin Kim +5Controllable Image Generation Compositional T2I Generation
Department of Artificial Intelligence Korea University Seoul, Republic of Korea · KT Corporation Seoul, Republic of Korea
Region-Constrained Group Relative Policy Optimization for Flow-Based Image Editing
Apr 10, 2026Zhuohan Ouyang, Zhe Qian, Wenhuo Cui +1Text-Guided Image Editing Group Relative Policy Optimization
1South China Normal University · 2South China Agricultural University · 3Monash University
Finite Difference Flow Optimization for RL Post-Training of Text-to-Image Models
Mar 13, 2026David McAllister, Miika Aittala, Tero Karras +4RL for Image Generation RL for Diffusion Models
UC Berkeley · NVIDIA
Alleviating Sparse Rewards by Modeling Step-Wise and Long-Term Sampling Effects in Flow-Based GRPO
Feb 6, 2026Yunze Tong, Mushui Liu, Canyu Zhao +7Flow Matching Temporal Credit Assignment
1Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China · 2Taobao & Tmall Group of Alibaba, Hangzhou, China · 3Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Understanding Reward Hacking in Text-to-Image Reinforcement Learning
Jan 6, 2026Yunqi Hong, Kuei-Chun Kao, Hengguang Zhou +1Reward Hacking Multimodal Reward Modeling
Department of Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles
RubricRL: Simple Generalizable Rewards for Text-to-Image Generation
Nov 25, 2025Xuelu Feng, Yunsheng Li, Ziyu Wan +4Reward Modeling T2I Generation
University at Buffalo · Microsoft AI · Nikola Tesla STEM High School
SRUM: Fine-Grained Self-Rewarding for Unified Multimodal Models
Oct 14, 2025Weiyang Jin, Yuwei Niu, Jiaqi Liao +4Unified Multimodal Models T2I Generation
HKU MMLab · The University of Hong Kong · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute +2
Advantage Weighted Matching: Aligning RL with Pretraining in Diffusion Models
Sep 29, 2025Shuchen Xue, Chongjian Ge, Shilong Zhang +2Score Matching Diffusion Model Alignment
UCAS · Adobe Research · HKU +1

Oct 7, 2026, cs.CVJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Visual Jev Rewards: Reference-Bound Verification for Multi-Subject Image Generation

Baoteng Li, Wenzhuo Wu, Kongming Liang, Zhanyu Ma

School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications1 · Beijing Key Laboratory of Multimodal Data Intelligent Perception and Governance2

Reward Modeling Image Generation Evaluation Image Generation RL for Image Generation Vision-Language Model-as-a-Judge

Open paper AskPDF arXiv

Multi-subject image generation requires rewards that verify whether requested attributes, actions, and relations hold for the specified reference subjects. Subject presence alone does not establish that the correct subjects participate in a requested interaction. We present reference-bound Visual Jev rewards that turn these visual decisions into generator training signals. Each subject-related question receives a positive label only when the requested condition and the relevant reference identities hold jointly. We construct fixed questions offline, train a Qwen3.5-4B verifier with binary supervision, and directly read Yes probabilities from its language-model head. Their mean supplies a GRPO reward while retaining individual judgments for inspection. Using 200 MICo-150K training tasks and 30 updates, the framework raises a GPT-5.4 composite score from 41.78 to 52.50 on a manually selected 897-task MICo-Bench subset; direct 27B rewards yield 51.84. Each reward is tested in one GRPO run, and offline human evaluation does not establish a statistically significant advantage over direct scoring. The study provides an initial implementation and evaluation of Visual Jev as a reference-bound reward for multi-subject image generation.

Momentum

Related topics

Latest papers 53