RL for Video Generation

RL: Reinforcement Learning

Overview

The field uses reinforcement learning to post-train pretrained diffusion, flow-matching, and autoregressive video generators, aiming to improve outputs beyond what supervised training alone achieves. Common approaches include Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), preference-based optimization, reward-weighted velocity updates, and planner-executor systems that break complex generation tasks into steps. Rewards may score human preferences, text alignment, temporal and geometric consistency, physical plausibility, or whether generated actions succeed in simulated and real robot tasks; evaluation spans benchmarks such as VBench and VideoPhy as well as human studies and manipulation tests. A central challenge is making rewards reliable and informative without encouraging reward hacking, while balancing visual quality with coherent motion, physical realism, and stable, efficient training.

Latest papers

CardsList

48 papers14 papers in the last four weeks, up 250% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. ACWM-RM: A Reference-Free Reward Model from Complementary Mismatch Preferences

    Oct 23, 2026Shibo Hong, Siyu Ren, FengJiao Chen +3Multimodal Reward ModelingRL for Video Generation

  2. CineEvolve: An Agentic Self-Evolution Framework for Cinematic Multi-Shot Video Generation

    Oct 21, 2026Jingzhe Zhang, Peixuan Zhang, Genying Li +4Video GenerationMulti-Shot Video Generation

  3. Routing Policy Optimization for Online Diffusion Reinforcement Learning

    Oct 15, 2026Qiuhong Shen, Yiding Yang, Yuxin Zhang +8RL for Image GenerationRL for Diffusion Models

  4. When Pairwise Preferences Cycle: A Reliability-Anchored Preference Walk for Video GRPO

    Oct 14, 2026Xinrui Lin, Fan Li, Shumin Wang +2Pairwise Preference LearningRL for Video Generation

  5. FlowCred: Hierarchical Credit Assignment and Functional Coordination for Joint Text-to-Video Post-Training

    Oct 13, 2026Mingxuan Zhu, Yanwei Huang, Shiyuan Liu +4T2V GenerationPrompt Optimization for T2V Generation

  6. REEL: Learning to Retrieve, Evaluate, and Evolve Visual Memory for Any Long-Horizon Multi-Shot Video Generation

    Oct 12, 2026Hang Xu, Guohui Zhang, Xiaoxiao Ma +7Memory-Augmented Video GenerationLong-Horizon Video Generation

  7. GraftOOD: Grafting Out-of-Distribution Exemplars into Advantage-Weighted Rectification for Video Reward Optimization

    Oct 9, 2026Zheming Fu, Ruizhe He, Wenbin Ning +7RL for Video GenerationRL for Generative Models

  8. VideoAWR: Reinforcing Video Flow Models with Decoupled-Timestep Advantage-Weighted Rectification

    Oct 9, 2026Zheming Fu, Wenbin Ning, Ruizhe He +6RL for Video GenerationFlow-Based Generative Modeling

  9. DiffusionART: Efficient, Stable and Scalable Reinforcement of Diffusion Models

    Oct 8, 2026Zhenglin Wan, Jiayu Chen, Zhengfeiyang Zhang +6Diffusion Model Fine-TuningRL for Diffusion Models

  10. WorldAlign: Decoupled 4D Reward for World-Consistent Video Generation

    Oct 8, 2026Jing He, Kaixin Ding, Xingye Tian +5Video GenerationTemporal Consistency in Video Generation

  11. PWM: Personalized World Models with Online Reinforcement Learning

    Oct 4, 2026Zhexin Lou, Guancheng Lu, Zeyu Zhang +3World ModelsAction-Conditioned World Models

  12. LoGo: Local-Global Rewards for Consistent Long-Horizon Video Generation

    Oct 2, 2026Ziqi Ma, Shreya Sharma, Mohamed El Banani +8Camera-Controlled Video GenerationLong-Horizon Video Generation

  13. Token-Level Video Reinforcement Learning

    Oct 1, 2026Yifan Wang, Gordon Guocheng Qian, Yanyu Li +2Video Diffusion ModelsRL for Video Generation

  14. VideoGen-Agent: Reinforcing Video Generation Agents

    Sep 21, 2026Binxu Li, Haoyi Duan, Yuhui Zhang +9RL for Video GenerationAgentic Video Generation

  15. WorldReward: Reward Modeling for Camera-Conditioned World Models

    Sep 3, 2026Yibin Wang, Zehan Wang, Junshu Tang +13Reward ModelingCamera-Conditioned Video Generation

  16. Step Back to Move Forward: Reflection-Aware Preference Optimization for Visual Generation

    Sep 3, 2026Junlong Wu, Jiuzhou Lin, Jia Sun +7Preference Optimization for Diffusion ModelsDiffusion Model Alignment

  17. AgenticGen: Reward-Guided Agentic Video Generation for Advertising

    Aug 31, 2026Xingyuan Bu, Chengru Song, Hao Zhou +9Reward ModelingAgentic RL

  18. Scaling Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Models via Velocity Matching

    Aug 24, 2026Jaemoo Choi, Wei Guo, Yuchen Zhu +4Diffusion Model Fine-TuningRL for Diffusion Models

  19. VA-Judger: Reward Modeling from Human Preference Feedback for Joint Video-Audio Generation

    Aug 19, 2026Yinming Huang, Shuyuan Tu, Xi Yan +6Reward ModelingAudio-Video Generation

  20. Aligning Human Sense: Calibrated Distributional Reward Learning for Video Generation

    Aug 16, 2026Nai-Xin Zhai, Weihua Cheng, Dexu Yu +9RL for Video GenerationReward Modeling

  21. Reinforcement Learning: From Algorithms To Foundation Models

    Jul 20, 2026Zihan DingReinforcement LearningRL for Video Generation

  22. TempAct: Advancing Temporal Plausibility in Autoregressive Video Generation via Planner-Executor RL

    Jun 26, 2026Jing Wang, Xiangxin Zhou, Jiajun Liang +5Autoregressive DiffusionRL for Video Generation

  23. ReFree: Towards Realistic Co-Speech Video Generation via Reward-Free RL and Multilevel Speech Guidance

    Jun 11, 2026Salaheldin Mohamed, M. Hamza Mughal, Rishabh Dabral +1Audio-Video GenerationRL for Video Generation

  24. World Model Self-Distillation: Training World Models to Solve General Tasks

    Jun 10, 2026Sebastian Stapf, Pablo Acuaviva Huertos, Aram Davtyan +1Video Diffusion ModelsRL for Video Generation

  25. Flow-DPPO: Divergence Proximal Policy Optimization for Flow Matching Models

    Jun 9, 2026Bowen Ping, Xiangxin Zhou, Penghui Qi +3RL for Video GenerationRL for Image Generation

  26. Geo-Align: Video Generation Alignment via Metric Geometry Reward

    May 22, 2026Zizun Li, Haoyu Guo, Runzhe Teng +2Camera-Controlled Video GenerationReinforcement Learning

  27. CogOmniControl: Reasoning-Driven Controllable Video Generation via Creative Intent Cognition

    May 19, 2026Hongji Yang, Songlian Li, Yucheng Zhou +4Video Diffusion ModelsRL for Video Generation

  28. NEWTON: Agentic Planning for Physically Grounded Video Generation

    May 18, 2026Yuxiang Feng, Juncheng Wang, Chao Xu +7Physics-Informed Generative ModelingPhysical Consistency in Video Generation