mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Interleaving Reasoning for Better Text-to-Image Generation

arXiv 2509.06945 ↗First posted 8 Sep 2025cs.CV cs.AI cs.CLcited by 41

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Abstract (arXiv)

Unified multimodal understanding and generation models recently have achieve significant improvement in image generation capability, yet a large gap remains in instruction following and detail preservation compared to systems that tightly couple comprehension with generation such as GPT-4o. Motivated by recent advances in interleaving reasoning, we explore whether such reasoning can further improve Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. We introduce Interleaving Reasoning Generation (IRG), a framework that alternates between text-based thinking and image synthesis: the model first produces a text-based thinking to guide an initial image, then reflects on the result to refine fine-grained details, visual quality, and aesthetics while preserving semantics. To train IRG effectively, we propose Interleaving Reasoning Generation Learning (IRGL), which targets two sub-goals: (1) strengthening the initial think-and-generate stage to establish core content and base quality, and (2) enabling high-quality textual reflection and faithful implementation of those refinements in a subsequent image. We curate IRGL-300K, a dataset organized into six decomposed learning modes that jointly cover learning text-based thinking, and full thinking-image trajectories. Starting from a unified foundation model that natively emits interleaved text-image outputs, our two-stage training first builds robust thinking and reflection, then efficiently tunes the IRG pipeline in the full thinking-image trajectory data. Extensive experiments show SoTA performance, yielding absolute gains of 5-10 points on GenEval, WISE, TIIF, GenAI-Bench, and OneIG-EN, alongside substantial improvements in visual quality and fine-grained fidelity. The code, model weights and datasets will be released in: https://github.com/Osilly/Interleaving-Reasoning-Generation .

Key facts. Cited by 41 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 54 of its 65 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Sep 2025.

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54 of 65 references.

References · 54

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  2. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
  3. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,585
  4. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  5. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,847
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  7. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
  8. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  9. 2023GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignmentcited by 972
  10. 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 927
  11. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 897
  12. 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 812
38 more
  1. 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 781
  2. 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 752
  3. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 665
  4. 2023NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLMcited by 615
  5. 2024Transfusion: Predict the Next Token and Diffuse Images with One Multi-Modal Modelcited by 483
  6. 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 457
  7. 2024LLaVA-CoT: Let Vision Language Models Reason Step-by-Stepcited by 454
  8. 2024OmniGen: Unified Image Generationcited by 394
  9. 2025BLIP3-o: A Family of Fully Open Unified Multimodal Models-Architecture, Training and Datasetcited by 376
  10. 2024SEED-X: Multimodal Models with Unified Multi-granularity Comprehension and Generationcited by 331
  11. 2024Infinity: Scaling Bitwise AutoRegressive Modeling for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 304
  12. 2023Unified-IO 2: Scaling Autoregressive Multimodal Models with Vision, Language, Audio, and Actioncited by 302
  13. 2024Hunyuan-DiT: A Powerful Multi-Resolution Diffusion Transformer with Fine-Grained Chinese Understandingcited by 298
  14. 2023DreamLLM: Synergistic Multimodal Comprehension and Creationcited by 297
  15. 2024VILA-U: a Unified Foundation Model Integrating Visual Understanding and Generationcited by 295
  16. 2024Playground v2.5: Three Insights towards Enhancing Aesthetic Quality in Text-to-Image Generationcited by 256
  17. 2025OmniGen2: Towards Instruction-Aligned Multimodal Generationcited by 253
  18. 2025Show-o2: Improved Native Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 250
  19. 2025Transfer between Modalities with MetaQueriescited by 236
  20. 2024MetaMorph: Multimodal Understanding and Generation via Instruction Tuningcited by 206
  21. 2025WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 204
  22. 2024TokenFlow: Unified Image Tokenizer for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 202
  23. 2025Unified Reward Model for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 199
  24. 2025T2I-R1: Reinforcing Image Generation with Collaborative Semantic-level and Token-level CoTcited by 166
  25. 2025SANA 1.5: Efficient Scaling of Training-Time and Inference-Time Compute in Linear Diffusion Transformercited by 165
  26. 2024Mixture-of-Transformers: A Sparse and Scalable Architecture for Multi-Modal Foundation Modelscited by 163
  27. 2024JanusFlow: Harmonizing Autoregression and Rectified Flow for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 163
  28. 2025UniTok: A Unified Tokenizer for Visual Generation and Understandingcited by 153
  29. 2024GenAI-Bench: Evaluating and Improving Compositional Text-to-Visual Generationcited by 135
  30. 2024Lumina-Next: Making Lumina-T2X Stronger and Faster with Next-DiTcited by 132
  31. 2024LMFusion: Adapting Pretrained Language Models for Multimodal Generationcited by 120
  32. 2025Mogao: An Omni Foundation Model for Interleaved Multi-Modal Generationcited by 109
  33. 2025GoT: Unleashing Reasoning Capability of Multimodal Large Language Model for Visual Generation and Editingcited by 104
  34. 2025Lumina-Image 2.0: A Unified and Efficient Image Generative Frameworkcited by 96
  35. 2025OneIG-Bench: Omni-dimensional Nuanced Evaluation for Image Generationcited by 87
  36. 2025Thinking with Generated Imagescited by 73
  37. 2025TIIF-Bench: How Does Your T2I Model Follow Your Instructions?cited by 69
  38. 2024ILLUME: Illuminating Your LLMs to See, Draw, and Self-Enhancecited by 64

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 11; 2026: 30.

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  1. 2025ThinkMorph: Emergent Properties in Multimodal Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 56
  2. 2026Vision-DeepResearch Benchmark: Rethinking Visual and Textual Search for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 34
  3. 2026Flow-OPD: On-Policy Distillation for Flow Matching Modelscited by 34
  4. 2025ReasonEdit: Towards Reasoning-Enhanced Image Editing Modelscited by 25
  5. 2025Thinking-while-Generating: Interleaving Textual Reasoning throughout Visual Generationcited by 18
  6. 2026Unify-Agent: A Unified Multimodal Agent for World-Grounded Image Synthesiscited by 17
  7. 2026UniGRPO: Unified Policy Optimization for Reasoning-Driven Visual Generationcited by 13
  8. 2025DualVLA: Building a Generalizable Embodied Agent via Partial Decoupling of Reasoning and Actioncited by 12
  9. 2026UniReason 1.0: A Unified Reasoning Framework for World Knowledge Aligned Image Generation and Editingcited by 12
  10. 2025Agentic Jigsaw Interaction Learning for Enhancing Visual Perception and Reasoning in Vision-Language Modelscited by 11
  11. 2025MMaDA-Parallel: Multimodal Large Diffusion Language Models for Thinking-Aware Editing and Generationcited by 8
  12. 2025UniGen-1.5: Enhancing Image Generation and Editing through Reward Unification in Reinforcement Learningcited by 8
29 more
  1. 2026Show, Don't Tell: Morphing Latent Reasoning into Image Generationcited by 8
  2. 2026UniT: Unified Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Test-time Scalingcited by 8
  3. 2025IRG-MotionLLM: Interleaving Motion Generation, Assessment and Refinement for Text-to-Motion Generationcited by 6
  4. 2026M3: High-fidelity Text-to-Image Generation via Multi-Modal, Multi-Agent and Multi-Round Visual Reasoningcited by 6
  5. 2026CoCo: Code as CoT for Text-to-Image Preview and Rare Concept Generationcited by 6
  6. 2026Chain of Event-Centric Causal Thought for Physically Plausible Video Generationcited by 6
  7. 2025ShowTable: Unlocking Creative Table Visualization with Collaborative Reflection and Refinementcited by 5
  8. 2026AlphaGRPO: Unlocking Self-Reflective Multimodal Generation in UMMs via Decompositional Verifiable Rewardcited by 4
  9. 2026StruVis: Enhancing Reasoning-based Text-to-Image Generation via Thinking with Structured Visioncited by 3
  10. 2026Meta-CoT: Enhancing Granularity and Generalization in Image Editingcited by 3
  11. 2026Breaking Dual Bottlenecks: Evolving Unified Multimodal Models into Self-Adaptive Interleaved Visual Reasonerscited by 3
  12. 2026Generation Navigator: A State-Aware Agentic Framework for Image Generationcited by 3
  13. 2026Unified Text-Image Generation with Weakness-Targeted Post-Trainingcited by 2
  14. 2026How RL Unlocks the Aha Moment in Geometric Interleaved Reasoningcited by 2
  15. 2026TorchUMM: A Unified Multimodal Model Codebase for Evaluation, Analysis, and Post-trainingcited by 2
  16. 2026OmniVerifier-M1: Multimodal Meta-Verifier with Explicit Structured Recalibrationcited by 2
  17. 2026Reason, Then Re-reason: Cross-view Revisiting Improves Spatial Reasoningcited by 2
  18. 2026IV-CoT: Implicit Visual Chain-of-Thought for Structure-Aware Text-to-Image Generationcited by 2
  19. 2026Refinement via Regeneration: Enlarging Modification Space Boosts Image Refinement in Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 1
  20. 2026Unlocking Complex Visual Generation via Closed-Loop Verified Reasoningcited by 1
  21. 2026LatentUMM: Dual Latent Alignment for Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 1
  22. 2026Benchmarking and Evolving Reason-Reflect-Rectify for Reflective Visual Generationcited by 1
  23. 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 1
  24. 2025BatonVoice: An Operationalist Framework for Enhancing Controllable Speech Synthesis with Linguistic Intelligence from LLMscited by 0
  25. 2025PromptLoop: Plug-and-Play Prompt Refinement via Latent Feedback for Diffusion Model Alignmentcited by 0
  26. 2026InterCoG: Towards Spatially Precise Image Editing with Interleaved Chain-of-Grounding Reasoningcited by 0
  27. 2026Physically Plausible Video Generation via Visual-Semantic Chain-of-Events Conditioningcited by 0
  28. 2026Learning Native Reflection in Unified Models with Interleaved Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  29. 2026Personalized Image Generation with Reasoning and Reflectioncited by 0