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

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

May 28, 2026, cs.CVJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Guidance Contrastive Token Credit Assignment for Discrete Policy Optimization

Shufan Li, Konstantinos Kallidromitis, Akash Gokul, Yuta Kyuragi+1

UCLA · Panasonic AI Research · NVIDIA

Token-Level Credit Assignment RL for Language Model Reasoning Credit Assignment in RL Policy Optimization RL for Image Generation Policy Gradient Methods

Open paper AskPDF arXiv

Group-advantage-based reinforcement learning methods, such as GRPO and DAPO, have demonstrated strong performance across diverse domains, including mathematical reasoning and text-to-image generation. However, their reliance on sample-level rewards introduces a key limitation as uniform credit assignment across all tokens fails to capture fine-grained, token-level contributions. To address this issue, we propose Guidance Contrastive Policy Optimization (GCPO), a novel algorithm that enables per-token credit assignment by contrasting model predictions under positive and negative prompts. Rather than uniformly broadcasting sample-level advantages, GCPO assigns token-level advantages proportional to the difference between these contrastive predictions, allowing more precise and informative learning signals. Empirically, we find that GCPO emphasizes semantically relevant regions such as visual areas aligned with textual prompts in text-to-image generation, and critical keywords within reasoning traces for chain-of-thought tasks. Through extensive experiments, GCPO consistently outperforms GRPO and DAPO baselines on both text-to-image generation and chain-of-thought reasoning benchmarks, demonstrating its effectiveness as a general and scalable optimization strategy for discrete policy learning.

Momentum

Related topics

Latest papers 53