Prompt Tuning with Soft Context Sharing for Vision-Language Models
On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Prompt learning and adaptation of CLIP
Abstract (arXiv)
Vision-language models have recently shown great potential on many tasks in computer vision. Meanwhile, prior work demonstrates prompt tuning designed for vision-language models could acquire superior performance on few-shot image recognition compared to linear probe, a strong baseline. In practice, many few-shot tasks are inherently correlated, particularly within specialized domains. However, such information is overlooked previously. Inspired by the fact that modeling task relationship by multi-task learning can usually boost performance, we propose a novel method SoftCPT (Soft Context Sharing for Prompt Tuning) to tune pre-trained vision-language models on multiple target few-shot tasks jointly. Specifically, we design a task-shared meta network to generate prompt context for each task using task name together with a learnable task context as input. The parameters of this meta network as well as the task context are tuned on the joint training set of all tasks. As such, the prompt context of all tasks will be shared in a soft manner. Extensive experiments across four multi-task few-shot datasets covering 44 tasks and 1593 categories demonstrate that SoftCPT significantly outperforms single-task prompt tuning methods, highlighting the effectiveness of multi-task learning for vision-language prompt tuning. Code is available at https://github.com/kding1225/softcpt.
Key facts. Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Prompt learning and adaptation of CLIP, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 65 of its 95 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Aug 2022.
Builds on
65 of 95 references.
Closest ancestors · 7
Same direction, newest first
- 2022Dual Modality Prompt Tuning for Vision-Language Pre-Trained Model17 Aug
- 2022Prompt-aligned Gradient for Prompt Tuning30 May
- 2022Prompt Distribution Learning6 May
- 2022Conditional Prompt Learning for Vision-Language Models10 Mar
- 2022Learning to Compose Diversified Prompts for Image Emotion Classification26 Jan
- 2021CLIP-Adapter: Better Vision-Language Models with Feature Adapters9 Oct
- 2021Learning to Prompt for Vision-Language Models2 Sep
Other references · 58
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38 more
- 2021The Power of Scale for Parameter-Efficient Prompt Tuningcited by 3,769
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- 2017Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learningcited by 3,001
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 5; 2024: 3; 2025: 3.
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- 2024Few-shot Adaptation of Multi-modal Foundation Models: A Survey3 Jan 2024
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- 2023Deeply Coupled Cross-Modal Prompt Learning29 May 2023
- 2023Improved Visual Fine-tuning with Natural Language Supervision4 Apr 2023
- 2023Vision-Language Models for Vision Tasks: A Survey3 Apr 2023
- 2023M-Tuning: Prompt Tuning with Mitigated Label Bias in Open-Set Scenarios9 Mar 2023
- 2022SuS-X: Training-Free Name-Only Transfer of Vision-Language Models28 Nov 2022
- 2023Vision-Language Models for Vision Tasks: A Surveycited by 834
- 2022SuS-X: Training-Free Name-Only Transfer of Vision-Language Modelscited by 118
- 2025EvoVLMA: Evolutionary Vision-Language Model Adaptationcited by 1
- 2025SocialFusion: Addressing Social Degradation in Pre-trained Vision-Language Modelscited by 1
- 2024Compositional Kronecker Context Optimization for Vision-Language Modelscited by 0
- 2025SocialFusion: Addressing Social Degradation in Pre-trained Vision-Language Models30 Nov 2025
- 2025EvoVLMA: Evolutionary Vision-Language Model Adaptation3 Aug 2025
- 2024Compositional Kronecker Context Optimization for Vision-Language Models18 Mar 2024
- 2023Vision-Language Models for Vision Tasks: A Survey3 Apr 2023
- 2022SuS-X: Training-Free Name-Only Transfer of Vision-Language Models28 Nov 2022
- 2023InfoPrompt: Information-Theoretic Soft Prompt Tuning for Natural Language Understandingcited by 29
- 2024Few-shot Adaptation of Multi-modal Foundation Models: A Surveycited by 28
- 2025Advances in Multimodal Adaptation and Generalization: From Traditional Approaches to Foundation Modelscited by 23
- 2024Learning to Prompt Segment Anything Modelscited by 13
- 2023Deeply Coupled Cross-Modal Prompt Learningcited by 11
- 2023Improved Visual Fine-tuning with Natural Language Supervisioncited by 7
- 2023M-Tuning: Prompt Tuning with Mitigated Label Bias in Open-Set Scenarioscited by 2
- 2025Advances in Multimodal Adaptation and Generalization: From Traditional Approaches to Foundation Models30 Jan 2025
- 2024Learning to Prompt Segment Anything Models9 Jan 2024
- 2024Few-shot Adaptation of Multi-modal Foundation Models: A Survey3 Jan 2024
- 2023InfoPrompt: Information-Theoretic Soft Prompt Tuning for Natural Language Understanding8 Jun 2023
- 2023Deeply Coupled Cross-Modal Prompt Learning29 May 2023
- 2023Improved Visual Fine-tuning with Natural Language Supervision4 Apr 2023
- 2023M-Tuning: Prompt Tuning with Mitigated Label Bias in Open-Set Scenarios9 Mar 2023
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- 2026Your Model Already Knows Don't Teach It, Learn to Ask It: Soft Prompting for Few-Shot Adaptation of Vision-Language Models