Qifan Yu

Qifan Yu, Juncheng Li, Longhui Wei et al.

Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) tuned on machine-generated instruction-following data have demonstrated remarkable performance in various multi-modal understanding and generation tasks. However, the hallucinations inherent in machine-generated data, which could lead to hallucinatory outputs in MLLMs, remain under-explored. This work aims to investigate various hallucinations (i.e., object, relation, attribute hallucinations) and mitigate those hallucinatory toxicities in large-scale machine-generated visual instruction datasets. Drawing on the human ability to identify factual errors, we present a novel hallucination detection and elimination framework, HalluciDoctor, based on the cross-checking paradigm. We use our framework to identify and eliminate hallucinations in the training data automatically. Interestingly, HalluciDoctor also indicates that spurious correlations arising from long-tail object co-occurrences contribute to hallucinations. Based on that, we execute counterfactual visual instruction expansion to balance data distribution, thereby enhancing MLLMs' resistance to hallucinations. Comprehensive experiments on hallucination evaluation benchmarks show that our method successfully mitigates 44.6% hallucinations relatively and maintains competitive performance compared to LLaVA. The data and code for this paper are publicly available. \url{https://github.com/Yuqifan1117/HalluciDoctor}.

Qifan Yu, Juncheng Li, Yu Wu et al.

Scene Graph Generation (SGG) aims to extract <subject, predicate, object> relationships in images for vision understanding. Although recent works have made steady progress on SGG, they still suffer long-tail distribution issues that tail-predicates are more costly to train and hard to distinguish due to a small amount of annotated data compared to frequent predicates. Existing re-balancing strategies try to handle it via prior rules but are still confined to pre-defined conditions, which are not scalable for various models and datasets. In this paper, we propose a Cross-modal prediCate boosting (CaCao) framework, where a visually-prompted language model is learned to generate diverse fine-grained predicates in a low-resource way. The proposed CaCao can be applied in a plug-and-play fashion and automatically strengthen existing SGG to tackle the long-tailed problem. Based on that, we further introduce a novel Entangled cross-modal prompt approach for open-world predicate scene graph generation (Epic), where models can generalize to unseen predicates in a zero-shot manner. Comprehensive experiments on three benchmark datasets show that CaCao consistently boosts the performance of multiple scene graph generation models in a model-agnostic way. Moreover, our Epic achieves competitive performance on open-world predicate prediction. The data and code for this paper are publicly available.

Kaihang Pan, Zhaoyu Fan, Juncheng Li et al.

The swift advancement in Multimodal LLMs (MLLMs) also presents significant challenges for effective knowledge editing. Current methods, including intrinsic knowledge editing and external knowledge resorting, each possess strengths and weaknesses, struggling to balance the desired properties of reliability, generality, and locality when applied to MLLMs. In this paper, we propose UniKE, a novel multimodal editing method that establishes a unified perspective and paradigm for intrinsic knowledge editing and external knowledge resorting. Both types of knowledge are conceptualized as vectorized key-value memories, with the corresponding editing processes resembling the assimilation and accommodation phases of human cognition, conducted at the same semantic levels. Within such a unified framework, we further promote knowledge collaboration by disentangling the knowledge representations into the semantic and truthfulness spaces. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our method, which ensures that the post-edit MLLM simultaneously maintains excellent reliability, generality, and locality. The code for UniKE is available at \url{https://github.com/beepkh/UniKE}.

Weile Chen, Bingchen Miao, Qifan Yu et al.

Recent advances in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have led to promising progress in web agents. However, existing web agents often rely on handcrafted execution pipelines or expensive expert trajectories, limiting their adaptability to complex, dynamic environments. To address these challenges, we propose SCALE (Self-Cognitive-Aware Learning and Exploration), which leverages three adversarial roles, Selector, Predictor, and Judger to autonomously discover the agent's limitations and expand its cognitive boundaries through environmental exploration. Moreover, we propose SCALE-Hop, a graph exploration strategy that facilitates global planning and helps agents avoid local exploration traps. To further support learning, we construct SCALE-20k, a large-scale dataset collected from 19 real-world websites, containing diverse task types and structured demonstrations generated from SCALE's exploration traces. Experimental results show that our approach significantly improves the performance and generalization of multiple MLLMs in various web environments. Our framework offers a scalable and generalizable solution for building truly autonomous and adaptive web agents.

Bosheng Qin, Wentao Ye, Qifan Yu et al.

The rising demand for creating lifelike avatars in the digital realm has led to an increased need for generating high-quality human videos guided by textual descriptions and poses. We propose Dancing Avatar, designed to fabricate human motion videos driven by poses and textual cues. Our approach employs a pretrained T2I diffusion model to generate each video frame in an autoregressive fashion. The crux of innovation lies in our adept utilization of the T2I diffusion model for producing video frames successively while preserving contextual relevance. We surmount the hurdles posed by maintaining human character and clothing consistency across varying poses, along with upholding the background's continuity amidst diverse human movements. To ensure consistent human appearances across the entire video, we devise an intra-frame alignment module. This module assimilates text-guided synthesized human character knowledge into the pretrained T2I diffusion model, synergizing insights from ChatGPT. For preserving background continuity, we put forth a background alignment pipeline, amalgamating insights from segment anything and image inpainting techniques. Furthermore, we propose an inter-frame alignment module that draws inspiration from an auto-regressive pipeline to augment temporal consistency between adjacent frames, where the preceding frame guides the synthesis process of the current frame. Comparisons with state-of-the-art methods demonstrate that Dancing Avatar exhibits the capacity to generate human videos with markedly superior quality, both in terms of human and background fidelity, as well as temporal coherence compared to existing state-of-the-art approaches.

Shang Xiang, Lin Yao, Zhen Wang et al.

The field of computer-aided synthesis planning (CASP) has seen rapid advancements in recent years, achieving significant progress across various algorithmic benchmarks. However, chemists often encounter numerous infeasible reactions when using CASP in practice. This article delves into common errors associated with CASP and introduces a product prediction model aimed at enhancing the accuracy of single-step models. While the product prediction model reduces the number of single-step reactions, it integrates multiple single-step models to maintain the overall reaction count and increase reaction diversity. Based on manual analysis and large-scale testing, the product prediction model, combined with the multi-model ensemble approach, has been proven to offer higher feasibility and greater diversity.

Qifan Yu, Zhenyu He, Sijie Li et al.

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has emerged as a powerful technique for enhancing language model's reasoning capabilities. However, generating long and correct CoT trajectories is challenging. Recent studies have demonstrated that Looped Transformers possess remarkable length generalization capabilities, but their limited generality and adaptability prevent them from serving as an alternative to auto-regressive solutions. To better leverage the strengths of Looped Transformers, we propose RELAY (REasoning through Loop Alignment iterativelY). Specifically, we align the steps of Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning with loop iterations and apply intermediate supervision during the training of Looped Transformers. This additional iteration-wise supervision not only preserves the Looped Transformer's ability for length generalization but also enables it to predict CoT reasoning steps for unseen data. Therefore, we leverage this Looped Transformer to generate accurate reasoning chains for complex problems that exceed the training length, which will then be used to fine-tune an auto-regressive model. We conduct extensive experiments, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, with significant improvements in the performance of the auto-regressive model. Code will be released at https://github.com/qifanyu/RELAY.

Qifan Yu, Zhebei Shen, Zhongqi Yue et al.

Instruction tuning fine-tunes pre-trained Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) to handle real-world tasks. However, the rapid expansion of visual instruction datasets introduces data redundancy, leading to excessive computational costs. We propose a collaborative framework, DataTailor, which leverages three key principles--informativeness, uniqueness, and representativeness--for effective data selection. We argue that a valuable sample should be informative of the task, non-redundant, and represent the sample distribution (i.e., not an outlier). We further propose practical ways to score against each principle, which automatically adapts to a given dataset without tedious hyperparameter tuning. Comprehensive experiments on various benchmarks demonstrate that DataTailor achieves 101.3% of the performance of full-data fine-tuning with only 15% of the data, significantly reducing computational costs while maintaining superior results. This exemplifies the "Less is More" philosophy in MLLM development. The code and data is available in this \href{https://github.com/Yuqifan1117/DataTailor}{URL}.

Bingchen Miao, Yang Wu, Minghe Gao et al.

The development of Generalist Virtual Agents (GVAs) has shown significant promise in autonomous task execution. However, current training paradigms face critical limitations, including reliance on outcome supervision and labor-intensive human annotations. To address these challenges, we propose Similar, a Step-Wise Multi-Dimensional Generalist Reward Model, which offers fine-grained signals for agent training and can choose better action for inference-time scaling. Specifically, we begin by systematically defining five dimensions for evaluating agent actions. Building on this framework, we design an MCTS-P algorithm to automatically collect and annotate step-wise, five-dimensional agent execution data. Using this data, we train Similar with the Triple-M strategy. Furthermore, we introduce the first benchmark in the virtual agent domain for step-wise, multi-dimensional reward model training and evaluation, named SRM. This benchmark consists of two components: SRMTrain, which serves as the training set for Similar, and SRMEval, a manually selected test set for evaluating the reward model. Experimental results demonstrate that Similar, through its step-wise, multi-dimensional assessment and synergistic gain, provides GVAs with effective intermediate signals during both training and inference-time scaling. The project is available at https://github.com/antgroup/Similar.

Wendong Bu, Yang Wu, Qifan Yu et al.

As multimodal large language models (MLLMs) advance, MLLM-based virtual agents have demonstrated remarkable performance. However, existing benchmarks face significant limitations, including uncontrollable task complexity, extensive manual annotation with limited scenarios, and a lack of multidimensional evaluation. In response to these challenges, we introduce OmniBench, a self-generating, cross-platform, graph-based benchmark with an automated pipeline for synthesizing tasks of controllable complexity through subtask composition. To evaluate the diverse capabilities of virtual agents on the graph, we further present OmniEval, a multidimensional evaluation framework that includes subtask-level evaluation, graph-based metrics, and comprehensive tests across 10 capabilities. Our synthesized dataset contains 36k graph-structured tasks across 20 scenarios, achieving a 91\% human acceptance rate. Training on our graph-structured data shows that it can more efficiently guide agents compared to manually annotated data. We conduct multidimensional evaluations for various open-source and closed-source models, revealing their performance across various capabilities and paving the way for future advancements. Our project is available at https://omni-bench.github.io/.

Qifan Yu, Xinyu Ma, Zhijian Zhuo et al.

Progressive Learning (PL) reduces pre-training computational overhead by gradually increasing model scale. While prior work has extensively explored depth expansion, width expansion remains significantly understudied, with the few existing methods limited to the early stages of training. However, expanding width during the mid-stage is essential for maximizing computational savings, yet it remains a formidable challenge due to severe training instabilities. Empirically, we show that naive initialization at this stage disrupts activation statistics, triggering loss spikes, while copy-based initialization introduces gradient symmetry that hinders feature diversity. To address these issues, we propose SPARKLING (balancing {S}ignal {P}reservation {A}nd symmet{R}y brea{K}ing for width-progressive {L}earn{ING}), a novel framework for mid-stage width expansion. Our method achieves signal preservation via RMS-scale consistency, stabilizing activation statistics during expansion. Symmetry breaking is ensured through asymmetric optimizer state resetting and learning rate re-warmup. Extensive experiments on Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models demonstrate that, across multiple width axes and optimizer families, SPARKLING consistently outperforms training from scratch and reduces training cost by up to 35% under $2\times$ width expansion.

Qifan Yu, Juncheng Li, Wentao Ye et al.

Recent text-to-image generation models have shown promising results in generating high-fidelity photo-realistic images. In parallel, the problem of data scarcity has brought a growing interest in employing AIGC technology for high-quality data expansion. However, this paradigm requires well-designed prompt engineering that cost-less data expansion and labeling remain under-explored. Inspired by LLM's powerful capability in task guidance, we propose a new paradigm of annotated data expansion named as ChatGenImage. The core idea behind it is to leverage the complementary strengths of diverse models to establish a highly effective and user-friendly pipeline for interactive data augmentation. In this work, we extensively study how LLMs communicate with AIGC model to achieve more controllable image generation and make the first attempt to collaborate them for automatic data augmentation for a variety of downstream tasks. Finally, we present fascinating results obtained from our ChatGenImage framework and demonstrate the powerful potential of our synthetic data for systematic vision adaptation. Our codes are available at https://github.com/Yuqifan1117/Labal-Anything-Pipeline.

Qifan Yu, Wei Chow, Zhongqi Yue et al.

Instruction-based image editing aims to modify specific image elements with natural language instructions. However, current models in this domain often struggle to accurately execute complex user instructions, as they are trained on low-quality data with limited editing types. We present AnyEdit, a comprehensive multi-modal instruction editing dataset, comprising 2.5 million high-quality editing pairs spanning over 20 editing types and five domains. We ensure the diversity and quality of the AnyEdit collection through three aspects: initial data diversity, adaptive editing process, and automated selection of editing results. Using the dataset, we further train a novel AnyEdit Stable Diffusion with task-aware routing and learnable task embedding for unified image editing. Comprehensive experiments on three benchmark datasets show that AnyEdit consistently boosts the performance of diffusion-based editing models. This presents prospects for developing instruction-driven image editing models that support human creativity.

Haiyi Qiu, Minghe Gao, Long Qian et al.

Video Large Language Models (Video-LLMs) have recently shown strong performance in basic video understanding tasks, such as captioning and coarse-grained question answering, but struggle with compositional reasoning that requires multi-step spatio-temporal inference across object relations, interactions, and events. The hurdles to enhancing this capability include extensive manual labor, the lack of spatio-temporal compositionality in existing data and the absence of explicit reasoning supervision. In this paper, we propose STEP, a novel graph-guided self-training method that enables Video-LLMs to generate reasoning-rich fine-tuning data from any raw videos to improve itself. Specifically, we first induce Spatio-Temporal Scene Graph (STSG) representation of diverse videos to capture fine-grained, multi-granular video semantics. Then, the STSGs guide the derivation of multi-step reasoning Question-Answer (QA) data with Chain-of-Thought (CoT) rationales. Both answers and rationales are integrated as training objective, aiming to enhance model's reasoning abilities by supervision over explicit reasoning steps. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of STEP across models of varying scales, with a significant 21.3\% improvement in tasks requiring three or more reasoning steps. Furthermore, it achieves superior performance with a minimal amount of self-generated rationale-enriched training samples in both compositional reasoning and comprehensive understanding benchmarks, highlighting the broad applicability and vast potential.

Wei Chow, Juncheng Li, Qifan Yu et al.

In recent times, Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have been trained under two predominant paradigms. Generative training has enabled Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) to tackle various complex tasks, yet issues such as hallucinations and weak object discrimination persist. Discriminative training, exemplified by models like CLIP, excels in zero-shot image-text classification and retrieval, yet struggles with complex scenarios requiring fine-grained semantic differentiation. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing a unified approach that integrates the strengths of both paradigms. Considering interleaved image-text sequences as the general format of input samples, we introduce a structure-induced training strategy that imposes semantic relationships between input samples and the MLLM's hidden state. This approach enhances the MLLM's ability to capture global semantics and distinguish fine-grained semantics. By leveraging dynamic sequence alignment within the Dynamic Time Warping framework and integrating a novel kernel for fine-grained semantic differentiation, our method effectively balances generative and discriminative tasks. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, achieving state-of-the-art results in multiple generative tasks, especially those requiring cognitive and discrimination abilities. Additionally, our method surpasses discriminative benchmarks in interleaved and fine-grained retrieval tasks. By employing a retrieval-augmented generation strategy, our approach further enhances performance in some generative tasks within one model, offering a promising direction for future research in vision-language modeling.

Hexiang Gu, Qifan Yu, Saihui Hou et al.

The rapid development of social media has intensified the spread of harmful content. Harmful memes, which integrate both images and text, pose significant challenges for automated detection due to their implicit semantics and complex multimodal interactions. Although existing research has made progress in detection accuracy and interpretability, the lack of a systematic, large-scale, diverse, and highly explainable dataset continues to hinder further advancement in this field. To address this gap, we introduce MemeMind, a novel dataset featuring scientifically rigorous standards, large scale, diversity, bilingual support (Chinese and English), and detailed Chain-of-Thought (CoT) annotations. MemeMind fills critical gaps in current datasets by offering comprehensive labeling and explicit reasoning traces, thereby providing a solid foundation for enhancing harmful meme detection. In addition, we propose an innovative detection framework, MemeGuard, which effectively integrates multimodal information with reasoning process modeling, significantly improving models' ability to understand and identify harmful memes. Extensive experiments conducted on the MemeMind dataset demonstrate that MemeGuard consistently outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in harmful meme detection tasks.

Bohong Wu, Mengzhao Chen, Xiang Luo et al.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful but often too slow and costly for real-world use during inference. Looped transformers save on parameters by reusing the same weights for multiple computational steps, or "loops." However, this approach has a major flaw: the loops run one after another, causing inference latency and memory requirements to increase with each added loop. This makes them impractical for fast applications. To solve this problem, we introduce the Parallel Loop Transformer (PLT). PLT is a new architecture that delivers the performance benefits of a deep, looped model but with the low latency of a standard, non-looped model. PLT works using two key techniques. First, Cross-Loop Parallelism (CLP) breaks the sequential dependency by computing different loops for different tokens at the same time, all within a single pass. Second, to prevent memory costs from growing, we use an Efficient Representation Enhancement strategy. This method shares the memory (KV cache) from the first loop with all other loops. It then uses a Gated Sliding-Window Attention (G-SWA) to combine this shared global information with local information, maintaining high accuracy. Our experiments show that PLT achieves the high accuracy of a traditional looped model but with almost no extra latency or memory cost compared to a standard transformer.

Haoyu Zheng, Qifan Yu, Binghe Yu et al.

Diffusion models have achieved remarkable progress in image and video stylization. However, most existing methods focus on single-style transfer, while video stylization involving multiple styles necessitates seamless transitions between them. We refer to this smooth style transition between video frames as video style morphing. Current approaches often generate stylized video frames with discontinuous structures and abrupt style changes when handling such transitions. To address these limitations, we introduce SOYO, a novel diffusion-based framework for video style morphing. Our method employs a pre-trained text-to-image diffusion model without fine-tuning, combining attention injection and AdaIN to preserve structural consistency and enable smooth style transitions across video frames. Moreover, we notice that applying linear equidistant interpolation directly induces imbalanced style morphing. To harmonize across video frames, we propose a novel adaptive sampling scheduler operating between two style images. Extensive experiments demonstrate that SOYO outperforms existing methods in open-domain video style morphing, better preserving the structural coherence of video frames while achieving stable and smooth style transitions.