The paper introduces Vision‑RL2, a region‑level reinforcement learning approach that optimizes a lightweight proposal network for fine‑grained multimodal large language model (MLLM) perception. By treating coherent image regions as actions and scoring them with a frozen MLLM reader, the method selectively focuses visual resolution on evidence, reducing token usage while improving accuracy across multiple benchmarks and backbones. The approach eliminates the need for region annotations, response sampling, or reasoning trajectories, and the refined proposals enable sparse encoding that magnifies relevant evidence.
By Yuheng Shi, Xiaohuan Pei, Minjing Dong, Chang Xu
The paper introduces FindIt, the first comprehensive benchmark for evaluating the promptable localization abilities of generalist multimodal large language models (MLLMs). It covers four core task categories—object detection, referring expression detection, instance-level detection, and video-based detection—and provides a unified framework that standardizes inputs, enforces parsable bounding box outputs, and defines transparent evaluation protocols. Using this benchmark, the authors assess a range of open-source and proprietary MLLMs, revealing both their strengths and limitations, particularly their sensitivity to formatting constraints and difficulty generalizing to minor variations.
By Eshika Khandelwal, Jingjing Pan, Mingfang Zhang, Quan Kong, Lorenzo Garattoni, Hilde Kuehne
arXiv:2608.30705v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) struggle with fine-grained Visual Search, the task of locating small or rare objects in high-resolution images...
By Jingyi He, Sanghwan Kim, Zeynep Akata
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
The paper explores soft prompting for few‑shot object detection with vision‑language models, showing that optimizing a small number of continuous prompt tokens—especially when placed at the cross‑modal boundary and initialized from an empty space token—can match LoRA performance while training far fewer parameters. Soft prompting also avoids catastrophic forgetting, transfers to newer models, and can be verbalized into readable prompts. The study extends these findings to manipulation tasks, indicating that VLMs already contain much of the necessary knowledge for specialized domains, and the main challenge is learning how to ask for it.
By Gautam Rajendrakumar Gare, Siyi Li, Hewei Wang, Cesar Daniel Hernandez, Wei Zhao, Wolfgang M. Pauli, John Galeotti, Deva Ramanan
The paper introduces AttWarp, a lightweight technique that uses a multimodal large language model’s cross‑modal attention to perform rectilinear warping of input images at test time. By reallocating spatial resolution toward query‑relevant regions without altering model weights or architecture, AttWarp preserves global context while making small objects and subtle relationships easier for the model to read. Experiments on five benchmarks and four MLLMs show consistent accuracy gains, improved compositional reasoning, and reduced hallucinations compared to baseline image‑manipulation methods.
By Dwip Dalal, Gautam Vashishtha, Utkarsh Mishra, Jeonghwan Kim, Madhav Kanda, Hyeonjeong Ha, Svetlana Lazebnik, Heng Ji, Unnat Jain
arXiv:2608.28707v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in Visual Question Answering (VQA), yet they continue to struggle with quest...
By Anoop Senthil
arXiv:2608.21819v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Reliable image captioning in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) requires captions to be both precise and complete, avoiding unsupported object mentions wh...
By Jihyung Ko, Eunji Jung, Hyeongsub Kim, Ziseok Lee, Jae Won Cho, Sanghyun Jo, Kyungsu Kim
The paper introduces the Necessary Tool‑Evidence Path (NTEP) annotation scheme and its associated reward mechanism (NTEP‑R) to better supervise vision‑language models that use external tools. By explicitly specifying which evidence is needed and penalizing redundant tool calls, the authors train an 8B‑parameter model that shows improved accuracy and tool‑use efficiency across seven image‑grounded benchmarks. The approach demonstrates that fine‑grained supervision of tool‑evidence paths is essential for robust agentic VLM performance.
By Xingming Long, Yu Liu, Zhiwei Yang, Hanqi Feng, Shaojie Zhang, Barnabas Poczos, Chao Jiang, Zhenbo Luo, Lei Jiang, Pei Fu
PixVL introduces a self‑supervised post‑training framework for pixel‑level multimodal large language models, addressing the scarcity of mask‑text pairs and optimization interference between region segmentation and region understanding. It employs a unified Mask‑Text Consistency Cycle that generates and self‑verifies regional descriptions using confuser‑aware semantic verification and cross‑view verification, while a quality‑coupled bidirectional learning strategy turns segmentation and understanding into mutual generators and verifiers. Experiments show that PixVL improves performance on both region understanding and segmentation tasks.
By Yicheng Xiao, Haoxuan Ma, Caorui Li, Yucheng Wu, Weijie Wang, Haoxiao Wang, Shuang Chen, Fan Yang, Haiyun Guo, Jinqiao Wang
arXiv:2610.02117v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: On-policy self-distillation has recently emerged as an effective approach for improving language-model reasoning by supervising students with a froze...
By Sophia Sirko-Galouchenko, Monika Wysoczanska, Andrei Bursuc, Nicolas Thome, Spyros Gidaris
arXiv:2604. 18347v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Vision Language Models (VLMs) achieved rapid progress in the recent years.
By Daniela Baiamonte, Elena Fano, Matteo Gabburo, Stefano Simonazzi, Leonardo Rigutini, Andrea Zugarini