# Optimizing Recommendations using Fine-Tuned LLMs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06841 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06841/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 17 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [Knowledge Distillation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05525/) (2020)
- [Magpie: Alignment Data Synthesis from Scratch by Prompting Aligned LLMs with Nothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08464/) (2024)
- [Structured Pruning of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.04732/) (2019)
- [Aligning Large Language Models for Controllable Recommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05063/) (2024)
- [AUGUST: an Automatic Generation Understudy for Synthesizing Conversational Recommendation Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09631/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As digital media platforms strive to meet evolving user expectations, delivering highly personalized and intuitive movies and media recommendations has become essential for attracting and retaining audiences. Traditional systems often rely on keyword-based search and recommendation techniques, which limit users to specific keywords and a combination of keywords. This paper proposes an approach that generates synthetic datasets by modeling real-world user interactions, creating complex chat-style data reflective of diverse preferences. This allows users to express more information with complex preferences, such as mood, plot details, and thematic elements, in addition to conventional criteria like genre, title, and actor-based searches. In today's search space, users cannot write queries like ``Looking for a fantasy movie featuring dire wolves, ideally set in a harsh frozen world with themes of loyalty and survival.'' Building on these contributions, we evaluate synthetic datasets for diversity and effectiveness in training and benchmarking models, particularly in areas often absent from traditional datasets. This approach enhances personalization and accuracy by enabling expressive and natural user queries. It establishes a foundation for the next generation of conversational AI-driven search and recommendation systems in digital entertainment.