Ming-Lite-Uni: Advancements in Unified Architecture for Natural Multimodal Interaction
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Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce Ming-Lite-Uni, an open-source multimodal framework featuring a newly designed unified visual generator and a native multimodal autoregressive model tailored for unifying vision and language. Specifically, this project provides an open-source implementation of the integrated MetaQueries and M2-omni framework, while introducing the novel multi-scale learnable tokens and multi-scale representation alignment strategy. By leveraging a fixed MLLM and a learnable diffusion model, Ming-Lite-Uni enables native multimodal AR models to perform both text-to-image generation and instruction based image editing tasks, expanding their capabilities beyond pure visual understanding. Our experimental results demonstrate the strong performance of Ming-Lite-Uni and illustrate the impressive fluid nature of its interactive process. All code and model weights are open-sourced to foster further exploration within the community. Notably, this work aligns with concurrent multimodal AI milestones - such as ChatGPT-4o with native image generation updated in March 25, 2025 - underscoring the broader significance of unified models like Ming-Lite-Uni on the path toward AGI. Ming-Lite-Uni is in alpha stage and will soon be further refined.
Key facts. Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 54 of its 64 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 May 2025.
Builds on
54 of 64 references.
References · 54
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
- 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
- 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 13,958
- 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,539
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- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
- 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,151
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- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
- 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,591
- 2023MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?cited by 2,105
- 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,044
38 more
- 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contextscited by 1,582
- 2024Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scalingcited by 1,573
- 2023MM-Vet: Evaluating Large Multimodal Models for Integrated Capabilitiescited by 1,221
- 2023GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignmentcited by 946
- 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 904
- 2024Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?cited by 893
- 2016A Diagram Is Worth A Dozen Imagescited by 793
- 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 787
- 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 761
- 2024Autoregressive Model Beats Diffusion: Llama for Scalable Image Generationcited by 760
- 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 734
- 2024DeepSeek-VL: Towards Real-World Vision-Language Understandingcited by 718
- 2023MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 615
- 2023HallusionBench: An Advanced Diagnostic Suite for Entangled Language Hallucination and Visual Illusion in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 572
- 2023Zero123++: a Single Image to Consistent Multi-view Diffusion Base Modelcited by 516
- 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 447
- 2024OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformercited by 334
- 2024SANA: Efficient High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Linear Diffusion Transformerscited by 331
- 2024SEED-X: Multimodal Models with Unified Multi-granularity Comprehension and Generationcited by 328
- 2023DreamLLM: Synergistic Multimodal Comprehension and Creationcited by 296
- 2024UltraEdit: Instruction-based Fine-Grained Image Editing at Scalecited by 266
- 2025Transfer between Modalities with MetaQueriescited by 231
- 2023Patch n' Pack: NaViT, a Vision Transformer for any Aspect Ratio and Resolutioncited by 226
- 2024MetaMorph: Multimodal Understanding and Generation via Instruction Tuningcited by 205
- 2024TokenFlow: Unified Image Tokenizer for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 200
- 2024HQ-Edit: A High-Quality Dataset for Instruction-based Image Editingcited by 191
- 2022Wukong: A 100 Million Large-scale Chinese Cross-modal Pre-training Benchmarkcited by 114
- 2024SEED-Data-Edit Technical Report: A Hybrid Dataset for Instructional Image Editingcited by 97
- 2024Animate-X: Universal Character Image Animation with Enhanced Motion Representationcited by 86
- 2023Ranni: Taming Text-to-Image Diffusion for Accurate Instruction Followingcited by 77
- 2024AesExpert: Towards Multi-modality Foundation Model for Image Aesthetics Perceptioncited by 53
- 2024StyleTokenizer: Defining Image Style by a Single Instance for Controlling Diffusion Modelscited by 32
- 2024StyleBooth: Image Style Editing with Multimodal Instructioncited by 28
- 2025Generating Multi-Image Synthetic Data for Text-to-Image Customizationcited by 25
- 2023Learning Disentangled Identifiers for Action-Customized Text-to-Image Generationcited by 24
- 2024Framer: Interactive Frame Interpolationcited by 24
- 2023Check, Locate, Rectify: A Training-Free Layout Calibration System for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 19
- 2025M2-omni: Advancing Omni-MLLM for Comprehensive Modality Support with Competitive Performancecited by 19
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 9; 2026: 4.
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- 2025Show-o2: Improved Native Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 242
- 2025Ovis-U1 Technical Reportcited by 65
- 2025TokLIP: Marry Visual Tokens to CLIP for Multimodal Comprehension and Generationcited by 50
- 2026Beyond Language Modeling: An Exploration of Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 32
- 2025Ming-UniVision: Joint Image Understanding and Generation with a Unified Continuous Tokenizercited by 27
- 2025UniFork: Exploring Modality Alignment for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 11
- 2025SynMotion: Semantic-Visual Adaptation for Motion Customized Video Generationcited by 7
- 2025HieraTok: Multi-Scale Visual Tokenizer Improves Image Reconstruction and Generationcited by 7
- 2026From Scale to Speed: Adaptive Test-Time Scaling for Image Editingcited by 7
- 2025ARGenSeg: Image Segmentation with Autoregressive Image Generation Modelcited by 5
- 2025What Happens Next? Next Scene Prediction with a Unified Video Modelcited by 2
- 2026COMPASS: Grounding Composition-Intent Guidance in Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 0
- 2026Object-Uni: A Unified Model for Object-Centric Spatial Understanding and Controllable Generation24 Aug 2026
- 2026COMPASS: Grounding Composition-Intent Guidance in Unified Multimodal Models27 Jun 2026
- 2026Beyond Language Modeling: An Exploration of Multimodal Pretraining3 Mar 2026
- 2026From Scale to Speed: Adaptive Test-Time Scaling for Image Editing24 Feb 2026
- 2025What Happens Next? Next Scene Prediction with a Unified Video Model15 Dec 2025
- 2025ARGenSeg: Image Segmentation with Autoregressive Image Generation Model23 Oct 2025
- 2025Ming-UniVision: Joint Image Understanding and Generation with a Unified Continuous Tokenizer8 Oct 2025
- 2025HieraTok: Multi-Scale Visual Tokenizer Improves Image Reconstruction and Generation28 Sep 2025
- 2025SynMotion: Semantic-Visual Adaptation for Motion Customized Video Generation30 Jun 2025
- 2025Ovis-U1 Technical Report29 Jun 2025
- 2025UniFork: Exploring Modality Alignment for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation20 Jun 2025
- 2025Show-o2: Improved Native Unified Multimodal Models18 Jun 2025
1 more
- 2025Ovis-U1 Technical Reportcited by 65
- 2025TokLIP: Marry Visual Tokens to CLIP for Multimodal Comprehension and Generationcited by 50
- 2025Ming-UniVision: Joint Image Understanding and Generation with a Unified Continuous Tokenizercited by 27
- 2025UniFork: Exploring Modality Alignment for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 11
- 2025HieraTok: Multi-Scale Visual Tokenizer Improves Image Reconstruction and Generationcited by 7
- 2025ARGenSeg: Image Segmentation with Autoregressive Image Generation Modelcited by 5
- 2025What Happens Next? Next Scene Prediction with a Unified Video Modelcited by 2
- 2026COMPASS: Grounding Composition-Intent Guidance in Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 0
- 2026Object-Uni: A Unified Model for Object-Centric Spatial Understanding and Controllable Generationcited by 0
- 2026Object-Uni: A Unified Model for Object-Centric Spatial Understanding and Controllable Generation24 Aug 2026
- 2026COMPASS: Grounding Composition-Intent Guidance in Unified Multimodal Models27 Jun 2026
- 2025What Happens Next? Next Scene Prediction with a Unified Video Model15 Dec 2025
- 2025ARGenSeg: Image Segmentation with Autoregressive Image Generation Model23 Oct 2025
- 2025Ming-UniVision: Joint Image Understanding and Generation with a Unified Continuous Tokenizer8 Oct 2025
- 2025HieraTok: Multi-Scale Visual Tokenizer Improves Image Reconstruction and Generation28 Sep 2025
- 2025Ovis-U1 Technical Report29 Jun 2025
- 2025UniFork: Exploring Modality Alignment for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation20 Jun 2025
- 2025TokLIP: Marry Visual Tokens to CLIP for Multimodal Comprehension and Generation8 May 2025
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- 2026JoyAI-Image: Awaking Spatial Intelligence in Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation
- 2024A Comprehensive Survey and Guide to Multimodal Large Language Models in Vision-Language Tasks
- 2026LLaDA2.0-Uni: Unifying Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Diffusion Large Language Model
- 2025Query-Kontext: An Unified Multimodal Model for Image Generation and Editing
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