mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SynthRL: Scaling Visual Reasoning with Verifiable Data Synthesis

arXiv 2506.02096 ↗First posted 2 Jun 2025cs.LG cs.CL cs.CVcited by 12

On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning

also in 2 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-language models (VLMs) trained via reinforcement learning with verifiable reward (RLVR) have shown notable progress in scaling test-time compute effectively. In this work, we investigate how synthesized RL data can further improve RLVR. To this end, we propose SynthRL-a scalable and guaranteed pipeline for automatic data scaling in reasoning-oriented RL training. SynthRL comprises three key stages: (1) selecting seed questions with appropriate distribution, (2) augmenting them into more challenging variants while preserving the original answers, and (3) a guaranteed verification stage that ensures near-perfect correctness and difficulty enhancement. Our empirical experiments demonstrate SynthRL's scalability and effectiveness. When applied to the MMK12 dataset, SynthRL synthesizes over 3.3K additional verifiable, challenging questions from approximately 8K seed samples. Models trained with our synthesized data achieve consistent gains across five out-of-domain visual math reasoning benchmarks, with a significant improvement over baseline models trained on seed data alone. Notably, detailed analysis reveals that the gains are more pronounced on the most challenging evaluation samples, highlighting SynthRL's effectiveness in eliciting deeper and more complex reasoning patterns.

Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 50 of its 72 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Jun 2025.

Builds on

50 of 72 references.

Closest ancestors · 14

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025NoisyRollout: Reinforcing Visual Reasoning with Data Augmentation17 Apr
  2. 2025SoTA with Less: MCTS-Guided Sample Selection for Data-Efficient Visual Reasoning Self-Improvement10 Apr
  3. 2025Kimi-VL Technical Report10 Apr
  4. 2025OpenVLThinker: Complex Vision-Language Reasoning via Iterative SFT-RL Cycles21 Mar
  5. 2025R1-Onevision: Advancing Generalized Multimodal Reasoning through Cross-Modal Formalization13 Mar
  6. 2025LMM-R1: Empowering 3B LMMs with Strong Reasoning Abilities Through Two-Stage Rule-Based RL10 Mar
  7. 2025MM-Eureka: Exploring the Frontiers of Multimodal Reasoning with Rule-based Reinforcement Learning10 Mar
  8. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models9 Mar
  9. 2025Unlocking Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning via Process Reward Model8 Jan
  10. 2024Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scaling6 Dec
  11. 2024We-Math: Does Your Large Multimodal Model Achieve Human-like Mathematical Reasoning?1 Jul
  12. 2024Math-LLaVA: Bootstrapping Mathematical Reasoning for Multimodal Large Language Models25 Jun
2 more
  1. 2023What Makes for Good Visual Instructions? Synthesizing Complex Visual Reasoning Instructions for Visual Instruction Tuning2 Nov
  2. 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts3 Oct

Other references · 36

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  3. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
  4. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
  5. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,467
  6. 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scalecited by 2,678
  7. 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,669
  8. 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 1,980
  9. 2023LLaVA-Med: Training a Large Language-and-Vision Assistant for Biomedicine in One Daycited by 1,287
  10. 2025Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspectivecited by 1,276
  11. 2025Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMscited by 1,193
  12. 2023WizardLM: Empowering large pre-trained language models to follow complex instructionscited by 1,116
24 more
  1. 2023Gemini: A Family of Highly Capable Multimodal Modelscited by 810
  2. 2024LESS: Selecting Influential Data for Targeted Instruction Tuningcited by 514
  3. 2025SimpleRL-Zoo: Investigating and Taming Zero Reinforcement Learning for Open Base Models in the Wildcited by 505
  4. 2023What Makes Good Data for Alignment? A Comprehensive Study of Automatic Data Selection in Instruction Tuningcited by 354
  5. 2024Magpie: Alignment Data Synthesis from Scratch by Prompting Aligned LLMs with Nothingcited by 341
  6. 2025R1-VL: Learning to Reason with Multimodal Large Language Models via Step-wise Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 296
  7. 2025VAPO: Efficient and Reliable Reinforcement Learning for Advanced Reasoning Taskscited by 281
  8. 2023How Abilities in Large Language Models are Affected by Supervised Fine-tuning Data Compositioncited by 222
  9. 2024Mulberry: Empowering MLLM with o1-like Reasoning and Reflection via Collective Monte Carlo Tree Searchcited by 171
  10. 2024QuRating: Selecting High-Quality Data for Training Language Modelscited by 153
  11. 2025Phi-4-reasoning Technical Reportcited by 146
  12. 2025LIMR: Less is More for RL Scalingcited by 136
  13. 2024NavGPT-2: Unleashing Navigational Reasoning Capability for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 96
  14. 2024Bias in Large Language Models: Origin, Evaluation, and Mitigationcited by 77
  15. 2024A Survey of Multimodal Large Language Model from A Data-centric Perspectivecited by 73
  16. 2024VLFeedback: A Large-Scale AI Feedback Dataset for Large Vision-Language Models Alignmentcited by 56
  17. 2024MMEvol: Empowering Multimodal Large Language Models with Evol-Instructcited by 42
  18. 2024Theorem-Validated Reverse Chain-of-Thought Problem Generation for Geometric Reasoningcited by 32
  19. 2023TextBind: Multi-turn Interleaved Multimodal Instruction-following in the Wildcited by 22
  20. 2024Biomedical Visual Instruction Tuning with Clinician Preference Alignmentcited by 21
  21. 2024Agri-LLaVA: Knowledge-Infused Large Multimodal Assistant on Agricultural Pests and Diseasescited by 14
  22. 2025Anyprefer: An Agentic Framework for Preference Data Synthesiscited by 10
  23. 2025Understanding and Mitigating Bias Inheritance in LLM-based Data Augmentation on Downstream Taskscited by 9
  24. 2025Multi-modal Synthetic Data Training and Model Collapse: Insights from VLMs and Diffusion Modelscited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 10.

12 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026VeriEvol: Scaling Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning via Verifiable Evol-Instruct
  2. 2025Rethinking RL Scaling for Vision Language Models: A Transparent, From-Scratch Framework and Comprehensive Evaluation Scheme
  3. 2025VisualSphinx: Large-Scale Synthetic Vision Logic Puzzles for RL
  4. 2025Long Grounded Thoughts: Synthesizing Visual Problems and Reasoning Chains at Scale
  5. 2026Vero: An Open RL Recipe for General Visual Reasoning
  6. 2026Be Faithful When Response: Returning Fluent and Grounded Answers for Vision-Language Models Reinforcement Learning
  7. 2024From the Least to the Most: Building a Plug-and-Play Visual Reasoner via Data Synthesis
  8. 2025VL-GenRM: Enhancing Vision-Language Verification via Vision Experts and Iterative Training