arXiv AI

Do Multimodal Agents Really Benefit from Tool Use? A Systematic Study of Capability Gains

arXiv:2606. 02357v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Tool-augmented multimodal agents show strong benchmark gains, often taken as evidence that agents have learned to use tools.

arXiv Computer Vision
4d ago

Beacon: Knowing When and How to Perform Agentic Visual Reasoning

Beacon is a new agentic visual reasoning model that improves multimodal large language models (MLLMs) by better deciding when to use tools and how to use them. It introduces two key concepts—Mode Adaptiveness, which ensures tools are invoked only when necessary, and Tool Effect, which measures the net benefit of tool use— and trains the model with supervised fine‑tuning and reinforcement learning that rewards necessity-aware decisions and expands capability through expert hints. Across 13 benchmarks, Beacon outperforms other open‑source models, achieving the highest average score and the largest net tool‑gain on diagnostic tests.

By Qixun Wang, Yang Shi, Letian Cheng, Zhuoran Zhang, Yan He, Yuqi Tang, Qi Zhang, Xinlei Yu, Ruizhe Chen, Tianrun Xu, Yuanxing Zhang, Pengfei Wan, Haotian Wang, Xianghua Ying
arXiv AI
Aug 25

ATP-Bench: Towards Agentic Tool Planning for MLLM Interleaved Generation

ATP‑Bench proposes a new benchmark for evaluating agentic tool planning in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) that generate interleaved text-and-image responses. The benchmark contains 7,702 QA pairs, including 1,592 visual‑question‑answer pairs, across eight categories and 25 visual‑critical intents, all verified by humans. A Multi‑Agent MLLM‑as‑a‑Judge (MAM) system is introduced to assess tool‑call precision, missed opportunities, and overall response quality without relying on ground‑truth references.

By Yinuo Liu, Zi Qian, Heng Zhou, Jiahao Zhang, Yajie Zhang, Zhihang Li, Mengyu Zhou, Erchao Zhao, Xiaoxi Jiang, Guanjun Jiang
arXiv AI
Aug 3

M3MAD-Bench: Multi-Dimensional Evaluation of Multi-Agent Debate Across Domains and Modalities

arXiv:2601. 02854v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As an agent-level reasoning and coordination paradigm, Multi-Agent Debate (MAD) orchestrates multiple agents through structured debate to improve answer quality and support complex reasoning.

By Ao Li, Jinghui Zhang, Luyu Li, Yuxiang Duan, Lang Gao, Mingcai Chen, Weijun Qin, Shaopeng Li, Fengxian Ji, Ning Liu, Lizhen Cui, Xiuying Chen, Yuntao Du
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 15

Running the Gauntlet: Re-evaluating the Capabilities of Agents Beyond Familiar Environments

arXiv:2606. 14397v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As agentic systems continue to evolve and are widely deployed in real-world scenarios, there is a growing demand to faithfully evaluate their capabilities.

By Mykola Vysotskyi, Runqi Lin, Grzegorz Biziel, Michal Zakrzewski, Sebastian Montagna, Damian Rynczak, Shreyansh Padarha, Kumail Alhamoud, Zihao Fu, William Lugoloobi, Kai Rawal, Hanna Yershova, Xander Davies, Taras Rumezhak, Guohao Li, Fazl Barez, Baoyuan Wu, Arkadiusz Drohomirecki, Yarin Gal, Chris Russell, Christopher Summerfield, Adam Mahdi, Volodymyr Karpiv, Philip Torr, Adel Bibi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 15

Running the Gauntlet: Challenging Agentic Tasks

arXiv:2606.14397v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As agentic systems continue to evolve and are widely deployed in real-world scenarios, there is a growing demand to faithfully evaluate their capab...

By Mykola Vysotskyi, Runqi Lin, Grzegorz Biziel, Michal Zakrzewski, Sebastian Montagna, Damian Rynczak, Shreyansh Padarha, Kumail Alhamoud, Zihao Fu, William Lugoloobi, Kai Rawal, Hanna Yershova, Taras Rumezhak, Guohao Li, Fazl Barez, Baoyuan Wu, Arkadiusz Drohomirecki, Yarin Gal, Chris Russell, Christopher Summerfield, Adam Mahdi, Volodymyr Karpiv, Philip Torr, Adel Bibi