COPE (Continual Optimization with Personalized embedding and self-Evaluation) is a new framework that continually personalizes large language models using learnable user embeddings and self‑evaluation to generate proxy rewards. It integrates preference capture, self‑evaluation calibration, and personalized response optimization into a single update step, allowing continuous model updates even when explicit user feedback is sparse. Experiments demonstrate that COPE outperforms both training‑free and training‑based baselines, remains complementary to Retrieval‑Augmented Prompting, and shows reliable self‑evaluation, meaningful preference patterns, stable general capabilities, and robustness to shifting preferences and alternative evaluators.
By Ruike Cao, Fugen Yao, Liang Dong, Jian Xu, Guanjun Jiang, Li Xiao
arXiv:2609.00251v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: As people increasingly interact with LLM assistants in daily life, continually adapting to individual preferences has become essential for effective lo...
By EunJeong Hwang, Kushan Mitra, Dan Zhang, Hannah Kim, Estevam Hruschka
arXiv:2609.15598v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Generative recommendation has emerged as a promising end-to-end paradigm for personalized recommendation. However, user preferences continuously evol...
By Xinyu Lin, Zhuosong Jiang, Zixiao Suo, Siqin Wang, Hanqing Zeng, Hanchao Yu, Yinglong Xia, Jiang Zhang, Aashu Singh, Fei Liu, Wenjie Wang, Fuli Feng, Yang Song, Qifan Wang, Tat-Seng Chua
arXiv:2606. 27634v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Small Language Models (SLMs) are increasingly being considered for deployment on edge devices such as laptops, enabling private, low-latency, and locally personalized applications.
By Thomas S. Paula, Lucas S. Kupssinsk\"u, Rodrigo C. Barros
HyperTrace is a training‑free framework that personalizes large language models by tracing latent user preferences online. It maintains interpretable natural‑language hypotheses about short‑term intent and long‑term preferences, updating them with an SMC‑style reweighting process driven by an LLM‑based surrogate choice model. Experiments on PRISM and PersonaMem‑v2 demonstrate that HyperTrace improves response alignment, preference prediction, and profile consistency compared to strong online baselines.
By Jianzhi Shen, Keyu Mao, Minghao Shao, Chuanyang Jin, Yusong Wang, Ailiang Lin, Kotaro Funakoshi, Manabu Okumura, Tianmin Shu, Muhammad Shafique
arXiv:2606. 15734v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Continual post-training enables models to absorb emerging knowledge after deployment, but repeatedly updating shared parameters can accumulate weight drift, potentially causing catastrophic forgetting and degrading general capabilities.
By Weihang Su, Jiacheng Kang, Jingyan Xu, Qingyao Ai, Jianming Long, Hanwen Zhang, Bangde Du, Xinyuan Cao, Min Zhang, Yiqun Liu
arXiv:2608. 16168v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly use external memory systems to support personalization by drawing on long and evolving interaction histories, in which user preferences may be distributed across time, change with context, and conflict with earlier evidence.
By Heng Wang, Yifei Li, Lingling Zhang, Pengyu Li, Xinyu Che, Xinyu Zhang, Zesheng Yang
arXiv:2604. 05379v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The sequential recommendation (SR) task aims to predict the next item based on users' historical interaction sequences.
By Xing Tang, Ziqiang Cui, Jingyang Bin, Xiaokun Zhang, Fuyuan Lyu, Jingyan Jiang, Dugang Liu, Chen Ma, Xiuqiang He
arXiv:2605. 05285v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) often suffer from catastrophic forgetting in continual learning: after learning new tasks sequentially, they perform worse on earlier tasks.
By Yazheng Liu, Yuxuan Wan, Rui Xu, Xi Zhang, Sihong Xie, Hui Xiong
The paper introduces TAP-PER, a prefix‑based framework that learns compact user representations for large language model personalization. By encoding user preferences into lightweight prefix embeddings and incorporating temporal signals, TAP‑PER avoids the need for heavy per‑user adapters or prompt‑serialized histories. Experiments on six LaMP tasks show that TAP‑PER outperforms both prompt‑based and model‑based baselines while using far fewer per‑user parameters, enabling scalable personalization at large user scales.
By Heng Cao, Fan Zhang, Jian Yao, Yujie Zheng, Changlin Zhao, Lu Hao, Yuxuan Wei, Wangze Ni, Huaiyu Fu, Yuqian Sun, Xuyan Mo
arXiv:2606. 17276v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Generative recommendation (GR) has emerged as a promising direction for recommender systems.
By Sunwoo Kim, Sunkyung Lee, Clark Mingxuan Ju, Donald Loveland, Bhuvesh Kumar, Kijung Shin, Neil Shah, Liam Collins
The paper introduces PIECE, a Parameter Importance-Driven Continual Learning method that selectively updates only 0.1% of core parameters to preserve general abilities while learning new domain knowledge. PIECE employs two importance estimators—PIECE‑F using Fisher Information and PIECE‑S combining gradient and curvature information—to guide updates. Experiments on three language models and two multimodal models demonstrate that PIECE maintains general capabilities and achieves state‑of‑the‑art continual learning performance without accessing prior training data or adding parameter overhead.
By Lingxiang Wang, Hainan Zhang, Zhiming Zheng