mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Align Anything: Training All-Modality Models to Follow Instructions with Language Feedback

arXiv 2412.15838 ↗First posted 20 Dec 2024cs.AI cs.CLcited by 38

On the map: LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation → Reward modeling and RLHF

Abstract (arXiv)

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has proven effective in enhancing the instruction-following capabilities of large language models; however, it remains underexplored in the cross-modality domain. As the number of modalities increases, aligning all-modality models with human intentions -- such as instruction following -- becomes a pressing challenge. In this work, we make the first attempt to fine-tune all-modality models (i.e. input and output with any modality, also named any-to-any models) using human preference data across all modalities (including text, image, audio, and video), ensuring its behavior aligns with human intentions. This endeavor presents several challenges. First, there is no large-scale all-modality human preference data in existing open-source resources, as most datasets are limited to specific modalities, predominantly text and image. Secondly, the effectiveness of binary preferences in RLHF for post-training alignment in complex all-modality scenarios remains an unexplored area. Finally, there is a lack of a systematic framework to evaluate the capabilities of all-modality models, particularly regarding modality selection and synergy. To address these challenges, we propose the align-anything framework, which includes meticulously annotated 200k all-modality human preference data. Then, we introduce an alignment method that learns from unified language feedback, effectively capturing complex modality-specific human preferences and enhancing the model's instruction-following capabilities. Furthermore, to assess performance improvements in all-modality models after post-training alignment, we construct a challenging all-modality capability evaluation framework -- eval-anything. All data, models, and code frameworks have been open-sourced for the community. For more details, please refer to https://github.com/PKU-Alignment/align-anything.

Key facts. Cited by 38 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reward modeling and RLHF, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation. Builds on 110 of its 128 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2024.

Builds on

110 of 128 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model29 May
  2. 2019Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferences18 Sep

Other references · 108

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  4. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  5. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  6. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  7. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  8. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
  9. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
  10. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,362
  11. 2022Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learningcited by 4,337
  12. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
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  1. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,151
  2. 2022LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text modelscited by 4,131
  3. 2022Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervisioncited by 3,972
  4. 2021GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 3,595
  5. 2023Qwen Technical Reportcited by 3,273
  6. 2024Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of contextcited by 3,175
  7. 2022Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedbackcited by 2,950
  8. 2023MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Modelscited by 2,689
  9. 2023A Survey of Large Language Modelscited by 2,537
  10. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformercited by 2,198
  11. 2023MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?cited by 2,105
  12. 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,076
  13. 2023Evaluating Object Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 1,696
  14. 2023MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 1,624
  15. 2021Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Videocited by 1,530
  16. 2023Video-LLaMA: An Instruction-tuned Audio-Visual Language Model for Video Understandingcited by 1,461
  17. 2015Microsoft COCO Captions: Data Collection and Evaluation Servercited by 1,447
  18. 2024LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Modelscited by 1,442
  19. 2024Video-MME: The First-Ever Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark of Multi-modal LLMs in Video Analysiscited by 1,375
  20. 2018BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learningcited by 1,282
  21. 2023MM-Vet: Evaluating Large Multimodal Models for Integrated Capabilitiescited by 1,221
  22. 2023ImageBind: One Embedding Space To Bind Them Allcited by 1,162
  23. 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,143
  24. 2023WizardLM: Empowering large pre-trained language models to follow complex instructionscited by 1,116
  25. 2023MVBench: A Comprehensive Multi-modal Video Understanding Benchmarkcited by 1,086
  26. 2023Video-ChatGPT: Towards Detailed Video Understanding via Large Vision and Language Modelscited by 1,047
  27. 2023ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captionscited by 1,000
  28. 2022CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformerscited by 973
  29. 2024SimPO: Simple Preference Optimization with a Reference-Free Rewardcited by 951
  30. 2023Pick-a-Pic: An Open Dataset of User Preferences for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 950
  31. 2023Training Diffusion Models with Reinforcement Learningcited by 939
  32. 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 904
  33. 2023A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 898
  34. 2023Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 847
  35. 2023Enhancing Chat Language Models by Scaling High-quality Instructional Conversationscited by 825
  36. 2023LLaMA-Adapter: Efficient Fine-tuning of Language Models with Zero-init Attentioncited by 776
  37. 2021NExT-QA:Next Phase of Question-Answering to Explaining Temporal Actionscited by 735
  38. 2023Aligning Large Multimodal Models with Factually Augmented RLHFcited by 703

50 most cited of 108 All 108 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 28; 2026: 10.

38 papers.

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  1. 2025From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 319
  2. 2025SafeVLA: Towards Safety Alignment of Vision-Language-Action Model via Constrained Learningcited by 69
  3. 2025Think with 3D: Geometric Imagination Grounded Spatial Reasoning from Limited Viewscited by 58
  4. 2025VisRL: Intention-Driven Visual Perception via Reinforced Reasoningcited by 39
  5. 2025Judge Anything: MLLM as a Judge Across Any Modalitycited by 33
  6. 2025Safe RLHF-V: Safe Reinforcement Learning from Multi-modal Human Feedbackcited by 27
  7. 2025SIFThinker: Spatially-Aware Image Focus for Visual Reasoningcited by 25
  8. 2025SAE-V: Interpreting Multimodal Models for Enhanced Alignmentcited by 22
  9. 2025VeOmni: Scaling Any Modality Model Training with Model-Centric Distributed Recipe Zoocited by 20
  10. 2025M2-omni: Advancing Omni-MLLM for Comprehensive Modality Support with Competitive Performancecited by 19
  11. 2025Mitigating Reward Over-Optimization in RLHF via Behavior-Supported Regularizationcited by 14
  12. 2025Generative RLHF-V: Learning Principles from Multi-modal Human Preferencecited by 13
26 more
  1. 2025Aligning Multimodal LLM with Human Preference: A Surveycited by 12
  2. 2025Omni-Reward: Towards Generalist Omni-Modal Reward Modeling with Free-Form Preferencescited by 11
  3. 2025SEA: Low-Resource Safety Alignment for Multimodal Large Language Models via Synthetic Embeddingscited by 9
  4. 2025SafeLawBench: Towards Safe Alignment of Large Language Modelscited by 9
  5. 2025SaFeR-VLM: Toward Safety-aware Fine-grained Reasoning in Multimodal Modelscited by 8
  6. 2026SafeNeuron: Neuron-Level Safety Alignment for Large Language Modelscited by 8
  7. 2025SUDER: Self-Improving Unified Large Multimodal Models for Understanding and Generation with Dual Self-Rewardscited by 6
  8. 2025MMMG: a Comprehensive and Reliable Benchmark for Multitask Multimodal Generationcited by 5
  9. 2025DriveRX: A Vision-Language Reasoning Model for Cross-Task Autonomous Drivingcited by 5
  10. 2025InterMT: Multi-Turn Interleaved Preference Alignment with Human Feedbackcited by 3
  11. 2025From Multimodal Perception to Strategic Reasoning: A Survey on AI-Generated Game Commentarycited by 3
  12. 2025MOSS-Speech: Towards True Speech-to-Speech Models Without Text Guidancecited by 3
  13. 2026MoD-DPO: Towards Mitigating Cross-modal Hallucinations in Omni LLMs using Modality Decoupled Preference Optimizationcited by 3
  14. 2025Stream Aligner: Efficient Sentence-Level Alignment via Distribution Inductioncited by 2
  15. 2025A Survey on Training-free Alignment of Large Language Modelscited by 2
  16. 2026AgentHPOBench: A Benchmark For Evaluating LLM Agents as Sequential Hyperparameter Optimizerscited by 2
  17. 2026Step-Level Preference Learning for Generative Agents in Social Simulationscited by 1
  18. 2025CalliReader: Contextualizing Chinese Calligraphy via an Embedding-Aligned Vision-Language Modelcited by 0
  19. 2025HKGAI-V1: Towards Regional Sovereign Large Language Model for Hong Kongcited by 0
  20. 2025Dual-Stream Attention with Multi-Modal Queries for Object Detection in Transportation Applicationscited by 0
  21. 2026SaFeR-ToolKit: Structured Reasoning via Virtual Tool Calling for Multimodal Safetycited by 0
  22. 2026SaFeR-Steer: Evolving Multi-Turn MLLMs via Synthetic Bootstrapping and Feedback Dynamicscited by 0
  23. 2026Learn from Your Mistakes: Tree-like Self-Play for Secure Code LLMscited by 0
  24. 2026Emergent Alignmentcited by 0
  25. 2026A Method for Learning Value Systems in Generative AIcited by 0
  26. 2026Mutually Adversarial Self-Training with Evolving Data for Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 0

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  3. 2023RRHF: Rank Responses to Align Language Models with Human Feedback without tears
  4. 2024Direct Language Model Alignment from Online AI Feedback
  5. 2025Evaluating and Steering Modality Preferences in Multimodal Large Language Model
  6. 2025KL-Regularized RLHF with Multiple Reference Models: Exact Solutions and Sample Complexity
  7. 2025Beyond RLHF: A Unified Theoretical Framework of Alignment
  8. 2022Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback