mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generation

arXiv 2408.12528 ↗First posted 22 Aug 2024cs.CVcited by 752

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Cited by 131 in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

We present a unified transformer, i.e., Show-o, that unifies multimodal understanding and generation. Unlike fully autoregressive models, Show-o unifies autoregressive and (discrete) diffusion modeling to adaptively handle inputs and outputs of various and mixed modalities. The unified model flexibly supports a wide range of vision-language tasks including visual question-answering, text-to-image generation, text-guided inpainting/extrapolation, and mixed-modality generation. Across various benchmarks, it demonstrates comparable or superior performance to existing individual models with an equivalent or larger number of parameters tailored for understanding or generation. This significantly highlights its potential as a next-generation foundation model. Code and models are released at https://github.com/showlab/Show-o.

Key facts. Cited by 752 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 71 of its 85 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Aug 2024.

Builds on

71 of 85 references.

References · 71

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  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
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  12. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,355
38 more
  1. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
  2. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,847
  3. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,326
  4. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,418
  5. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
  6. 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,288
  7. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  8. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 3,614
  9. 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,253
  10. 2023MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Modelscited by 2,711
  11. 2022Video Diffusion Modelscited by 2,305
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  14. 2022MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformercited by 1,099
  15. 2023ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captionscited by 1,005
  16. 2023GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignmentcited by 972
  17. 2022Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generationcited by 961
  18. 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 927
  19. 2023A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 909
  20. 2023PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 864
  21. 2024Cambrian-1: A Fully Open, Vision-Centric Exploration of Multimodal LLMscited by 838
  22. 2024Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generationcited by 777
  23. 2021Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 774
  24. 2018Image Transformercited by 772
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  26. 2023Muse: Text-To-Image Generation via Masked Generative Transformerscited by 648
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  28. 2023Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generationcited by 640
  29. 2023NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLMcited by 615
  30. 2023Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical reportcited by 565
  31. 2023mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaborationcited by 547
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  34. 2023VideoPoet: A Large Language Model for Zero-Shot Video Generationcited by 492
  35. 2024Transfusion: Predict the Next Token and Diffuse Images with One Multi-Modal Modelcited by 483
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  38. 2024Hallucination of Multimodal Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 388

50 most cited of 71 All 71 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 73; 2025: 362; 2026: 317.

752 papers.

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  1. 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 1,044
  2. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 897
  3. 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 781
  4. 2025Flow-GRPO: Training Flow Matching Models via Online RLcited by 661
  5. 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 457
  6. 2025CoT-VLA: Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 451
  7. 2025DeepEyes: Incentivizing "Thinking with Images" via Reinforcement Learningcited by 410
  8. 2024OmniGen: Unified Image Generationcited by 394
  9. 2024Infinity: Scaling Bitwise AutoRegressive Modeling for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 304
  10. 2024VILA-U: a Unified Foundation Model Integrating Visual Understanding and Generationcited by 295
  11. 2025OmniGen2: Towards Instruction-Aligned Multimodal Generationcited by 253
  12. 2025MMaDA: Multimodal Large Diffusion Language Modelscited by 250
38 more
  1. 2025Show-o2: Improved Native Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 250
  2. 2025LMM-R1: Empowering 3B LMMs with Strong Reasoning Abilities Through Two-Stage Rule-Based RLcited by 248
  3. 2025Transfer between Modalities with MetaQueriescited by 236
  4. 2024MetaMorph: Multimodal Understanding and Generation via Instruction Tuningcited by 206
  5. 2025WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 204
  6. 2024TokenFlow: Unified Image Tokenizer for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 202
  7. 2025Thinking with Images for Multimodal Reasoning: Foundations, Methods, and Future Frontierscited by 199
  8. 2025HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 181
  9. 2025Thyme: Think Beyond Imagescited by 167
  10. 2025T2I-R1: Reinforcing Image Generation with Collaborative Semantic-level and Token-level CoTcited by 166
  11. 2025FutureSightDrive: Thinking Visually with Spatio-Temporal CoT for Autonomous Drivingcited by 166
  12. 2024JanusFlow: Harmonizing Autoregression and Rectified Flow for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 163
  13. 2024In-Context LoRA for Diffusion Transformerscited by 158
  14. 2024Open-MAGVIT2: An Open-Source Project Toward Democratizing Auto-regressive Visual Generationcited by 155
  15. 2025UniTok: A Unified Tokenizer for Visual Generation and Understandingcited by 153
  16. 2025HunyuanImage 3.0 Technical Reportcited by 149
  17. 2025LLaDA-V: Large Language Diffusion Models with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 148
  18. 2024Fluid: Scaling Autoregressive Text-to-image Generative Models with Continuous Tokenscited by 147
  19. 2024HART: Efficient Visual Generation with Hybrid Autoregressive Transformercited by 132
  20. 2025Emu3.5: Native Multimodal Models are World Learnerscited by 132
  21. 2025Can We Generate Images with CoT? Let's Verify and Reinforce Image Generation Step by Stepcited by 131
  22. 2025Long-Context Autoregressive Video Modeling with Next-Frame Predictioncited by 123
  23. 2024LMFusion: Adapting Pretrained Language Models for Multimodal Generationcited by 120
  24. 2025HealthGPT: A Medical Large Vision-Language Model for Unifying Comprehension and Generation via Heterogeneous Knowledge Adaptationcited by 114
  25. 2025X-Omni: Reinforcement Learning Makes Discrete Autoregressive Image Generative Models Great Againcited by 112
  26. 2024Multimodal Autoregressive Pre-training of Large Vision Encoderscited by 109
  27. 2025Mogao: An Omni Foundation Model for Interleaved Multi-Modal Generationcited by 109
  28. 2024Adaptive Caching for Faster Video Generation with Diffusion Transformerscited by 108
  29. 2024UniReal: Universal Image Generation and Editing via Learning Real-world Dynamicscited by 102
  30. 2025UP-VLA: A Unified Understanding and Prediction Model for Embodied Agentcited by 102
  31. 2025Echo-4o: Harnessing the Power of GPT-4o Synthetic Images for Improved Image Generationcited by 100
  32. 2025LongCat-Image Technical Reportcited by 100
  33. 2025Envisioning Beyond the Pixels: Benchmarking Reasoning-Informed Visual Editingcited by 99
  34. 2025ShareGPT-4o-Image: Aligning Multimodal Models with GPT-4o-Level Image Generationcited by 97
  35. 2025TempFlow-GRPO: When Timing Matters for GRPO in Flow Modelscited by 97
  36. 2025Lumina-Image 2.0: A Unified and Efficient Image Generative Frameworkcited by 96
  37. 2024ImageFolder: Autoregressive Image Generation with Folded Tokenscited by 94
  38. 2024LLaMA-Mesh: Unifying 3D Mesh Generation with Language Modelscited by 91

50 most cited of 752 All 752 (JSON)

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