mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

ZeroGUI: Automating Online GUI Learning at Zero Human Cost

arXiv 2505.23762 ↗First posted 29 May 2025cs.AI cs.CL cs.CVcited by 44

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Embodied and 3D vision-language models

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid advancement of large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) has propelled the development of pure-vision-based GUI Agents, capable of perceiving and operating Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to autonomously fulfill user instructions. However, existing approaches usually adopt an offline learning framework, which faces two core limitations: (1) heavy reliance on high-quality manual annotations for element grounding and action supervision, and (2) limited adaptability to dynamic and interactive environments. To address these limitations, we propose ZeroGUI, a scalable, online learning framework for automating GUI Agent training at Zero human cost. Specifically, ZeroGUI integrates (i) VLM-based automatic task generation to produce diverse training goals from the current environment state, (ii) VLM-based automatic reward estimation to assess task success without hand-crafted evaluation functions, and (iii) two-stage online reinforcement learning to continuously interact with and learn from GUI environments. Experiments on two advanced GUI Agents (UI-TARS and Aguvis) demonstrate that ZeroGUI significantly boosts performance across OSWorld and AndroidLab environments. The code is available at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/ZeroGUI.

Key facts. Cited by 44 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 70 of its 81 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 May 2025.

Builds on

70 of 81 references.

Closest ancestors · 15

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025InfiGUI-R1: Advancing Multimodal GUI Agents from Reactive Actors to Deliberative Reasoners19 Apr
  2. 2025GUI-R1 : A Generalist R1-Style Vision-Language Action Model For GUI Agents14 Apr
  3. 2025VLM-R1: A Stable and Generalizable R1-style Large Vision-Language Model10 Apr
  4. 2025LMM-R1: Empowering 3B LMMs with Strong Reasoning Abilities Through Two-Stage Rule-Based RL10 Mar
  5. 2025Boosting the Generalization and Reasoning of Vision Language Models with Curriculum Reinforcement Learning10 Mar
  6. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models9 Mar
  7. 2025AutoGUI: Scaling GUI Grounding with Automatic Functionality Annotations from LLMs4 Feb
  8. 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents30 Oct
  9. 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents7 Oct
  10. 2024VisualAgentBench: Towards Large Multimodal Models as Visual Foundation Agents12 Aug
  11. 2024CRAB: Cross-environment Agent Benchmark for Multimodal Language Model Agents1 Jul
  12. 2024GUICourse: From General Vision Language Models to Versatile GUI Agents17 Jun
3 more
  1. 2024DigiRL: Training In-The-Wild Device-Control Agents with Autonomous Reinforcement Learning14 Jun
  2. 2024WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Models25 Jan
  3. 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents14 Dec

Other references · 55

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  2. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
  3. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  4. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  5. 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
  6. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  7. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,320
  8. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 8,065
  9. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  10. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
  11. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  12. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,234
38 more
  1. 2018UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reductioncited by 2,898
  2. 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scalecited by 2,810
  3. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 2,006
  4. 2025Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspectivecited by 1,345
  5. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,251
  6. 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,242
  7. 2025Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMscited by 1,210
  8. 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,195
  9. 2023CogVLM: Visual Expert for Pretrained Language Modelscited by 708
  10. 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agentscited by 610
  11. 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agentscited by 567
  12. 2024GPT-4V(ision) is a Generalist Web Agent, if Groundedcited by 563
  13. 2025Visual-RFT: Visual Reinforcement Fine-Tuningcited by 513
  14. 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 468
  15. 2025R1-Onevision: Advancing Generalized Multimodal Reasoning through Cross-Modal Formalizationcited by 370
  16. 2023Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Controlcited by 319
  17. 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perceptioncited by 293
  18. 2018Reinforcement Learning on Web Interfaces Using Workflow-Guided Explorationcited by 284
  19. 2024Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interactioncited by 278
  20. 2025TTRL: Test-Time Reinforcement Learningcited by 275
  21. 2024WebRL: Training LLM Web Agents via Self-Evolving Online Curriculum Reinforcement Learningcited by 256
  22. 2024ShowUI: One Vision-Language-Action Model for GUI Visual Agentcited by 232
  23. 2024Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scalecited by 223
  24. 2024On the Effects of Data Scale on UI Control Agentscited by 194
  25. 2024GUIOdyssey: A Comprehensive Dataset for Cross-App GUI Navigation on Mobile Devicescited by 194
  26. 2023AutoDroid: LLM-powered Task Automation in Androidcited by 184
  27. 2020Mapping Natural Language Instructions to Mobile UI Action Sequencescited by 181
  28. 2024WebLINX: Real-World Website Navigation with Multi-Turn Dialoguecited by 180
  29. 2025R1-Zero's "Aha Moment" in Visual Reasoning on a 2B Non-SFT Modelcited by 165
  30. 2024OS-Genesis: Automating GUI Agent Trajectory Construction via Reverse Task Synthesiscited by 163
  31. 2024Android in the Zoo: Chain-of-Action-Thought for GUI Agentscited by 159
  32. 2024OmniACT: A Dataset and Benchmark for Enabling Multimodal Generalist Autonomous Agents for Desktop and Webcited by 157
  33. 2024Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructionscited by 140
  34. 2024WebCanvas: Benchmarking Web Agents in Online Environmentscited by 121
  35. 2024AMEX: Android Multi-annotation Expo Dataset for Mobile GUI Agentscited by 113
  36. 2024AndroidLab: Training and Systematic Benchmarking of Android Autonomous Agentscited by 107
  37. 2024VisualWebBench: How Far Have Multimodal LLMs Evolved in Web Page Understanding and Grounding?cited by 100
  38. 2024AutoGLM: Autonomous Foundation Agents for GUIscited by 100

50 most cited of 55 All 55 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 16; 2026: 28.

44 papers.

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  1. 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiencycited by 1,510
  2. 2025The Landscape of Agentic Reinforcement Learning for LLMs: A Surveycited by 205
  3. 2025A Survey of Reinforcement Learning for Large Reasoning Modelscited by 180
  4. 2025MobileGUI-RL: Advancing Mobile GUI Agent through Reinforcement Learning in Online Environmentcited by 52
  5. 2025ComputerRL: Scaling End-to-End Online Reinforcement Learning for Computer Use Agentscited by 50
  6. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 50
  7. 2025Efficient Multi-turn RL for GUI Agents via Decoupled Training and Adaptive Data Curationcited by 26
  8. 2025A Survey on Agentic Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 23
  9. 2026CUA-Gym: Scaling Verifiable Training Environments and Tasks for Computer-Use Agentscited by 23
  10. 2025UItron: Foundational GUI Agent with Advanced Perception and Planningcited by 22
  11. 2025CUARewardBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating Reward Models on Computer-using Agentcited by 18
  12. 2025WebCoach: Self-Evolving Web Agents with Cross-Session Memory Guidancecited by 16
32 more
  1. 2026ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agentscited by 11
  2. 2025Beyond Pipelines: A Survey of the Paradigm Shift toward Model-Native Agentic AIcited by 8
  3. 2026Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Applicationcited by 8
  4. 2026MobileForge: Annotation-Free Adaptation for Mobile GUI Agents with Hierarchical Feedback-Guided Policy Optimizationcited by 7
  5. 2025The Path of Self-Evolving Large Language Models: Achieving Data-Efficient Learning via Intrinsic Feedbackcited by 6
  6. 2025AndroidControl-Curated: Revealing the True Potential of GUI Agents through Benchmark Purificationcited by 6
  7. 2025OS-Oracle: A Comprehensive Framework for Cross-Platform GUI Critic Modelscited by 6
  8. 2026Generalization in Online Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Agentscited by 6
  9. 2026Scaling Large Reasoning Models beyond Human Supervision: A Path toward Superintelligencecited by 5
  10. 2026Learning with Challenges: Adaptive Difficulty-Aware Data Generation for Mobile GUI Agent Trainingcited by 4
  11. 2026Agentic Reward Modeling: Verifying GUI Agent via Progressive Trajectory-Grounded Interactioncited by 4
  12. 2025SmartSnap: Proactive Evidence Seeking for Self-Verifying Agentscited by 3
  13. 2026SlowBA: An efficiency backdoor attack towards VLM-based GUI agentscited by 3
  14. 2026Video-Based Reward Modeling for Computer-Use Agentscited by 3
  15. 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitantscited by 3
  16. 2026Recovering Policy-Induced Errors: Benchmarking and Trajectory Synthesis for Robust GUI Agentscited by 3
  17. 2026Interactive Reward Agent: GUI Task Evaluation via Environment-State Verificationcited by 3
  18. 2025TGPO: Tree-Guided Preference Optimization for Robust Web Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  19. 2026Self-evolving Embodied AIcited by 2
  20. 2026Do Multi-Agents Dream of Electric Screens? Achieving Perfect Accuracy on AndroidWorld Through Task Decompositioncited by 2
  21. 2026StainFlow: Entity-Stain Tracking and Evidence Linking for Process Rewards in GUI Agentscited by 2
  22. 2026Learning to Explore: Scaling Agentic Reasoning via Exploration-Aware Policy Optimizationcited by 1
  23. 2026Learn from Weaknesses: Automated Domain Specialization for Small Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
  24. 2026SeekJudge: A Practical Reward Framework for Reinforcement Learning in Computer-Use Agentscited by 1
  25. 2026Task-Adaptive Rubrics for GUI Reward Modelingcited by 1
  26. 2026A Survey of Reinforcement Learning for Large Language Models under Data Scarcity: Challenges and Solutionscited by 0
  27. 2026Easy Samples Are All You Need: Self-Evolving LLMs via Data-Efficient Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  28. 2026AliyunConsoleAgent: Training Web Agents in Real-World Cloud Environments via Distillation and Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  29. 2026GUICrafter: Weakly-Supervised GUI Agent Leveraging Massive Unannotated Screenshotscited by 0
  30. 2026GSAR: Goal-State-Anchor Rewards for Mobile GUI Agents with Self-Evolving Data Synthesiscited by 0
  31. 2026Learn How to Act from Your Own Interactions: On-Policy Self-Distillation for GUI Agentscited by 0
  32. 2026SCOUT: Synergizing Reasoning and Tool-Use for Computer-Use Safetycited by 0

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  5. 2026GUI-Eyes: Tool-Augmented Perception for Visual Grounding in GUI Agents
  6. 2026AutoGUI-v2: A Comprehensive Multi-Modal GUI Functionality Understanding Benchmark
  7. 2025GUI-G1: Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training for Visual Grounding in GUI Agents
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