mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Reinforcement Learning with Inverse Rewards for World Model Post-training

arXiv 2509.23958 ↗First posted 28 Sep 2025cs.CVcited by 13

On the map: World models → Latent dynamics models and model-based RL

also in 2 more
Abstract (arXiv)

World models simulate dynamic environments, enabling agents to interact with diverse input modalities. Although recent advances have improved the visual quality and temporal consistency of video world models, their ability of accurately modeling human-specified actions remains under-explored. Reinforcement learning presents a promising approach for directly improving the suboptimal action-following capability of pre-trained models, assuming that an appropriate reward function can be defined. However, transferring reinforcement learning post-training methods to world model is impractical due to the prohibitive cost of large-scale preference annotations and the infeasibility of constructing rule-based video verifiers. To address this gap, we propose Reinforcement Learning with Inverse Rewards (RLIR), a post-training framework that derives verifiable reward signals by recovering input actions from generated videos using an Inverse Dynamics Model. By mapping high-dimensional video modality to a low-dimensional action space, RLIR provides an objective and verifiable reward for optimization via Group Relative Policy Optimization. Experiments across autoregressive and diffusion paradigms demonstrate 5-10% gains in action-following, up to 10% improvements in visual quality, and higher human preference scores, establishing RLIR as the first post-training method specifically designed to enhance action-following in video world models.

Key facts. Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Latent dynamics models and model-based RL, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 56 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2025.

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56 of 59 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

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  1. 2025RLVR-World: Training World Models with Reinforcement Learning20 May
  2. 2018World Models27 Mar

Other references · 54

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38 more
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  11. 2023GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 637
  12. 2023Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generationcited by 522
  13. 2025DanceGRPO: Unleashing GRPO on Visual Generationcited by 413
  14. 2024Panda-70M: Captioning 70M Videos with Multiple Cross-Modality Teacherscited by 393
  15. 2024DINO-WM: World Models on Pre-trained Visual Features enable Zero-shot Planningcited by 386
  16. 2022Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videoscited by 345
  17. 2024MoE-LLaVA: Mixture of Experts for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 300
  18. 2024Open-Sora Plan: Open-Source Large Video Generation Modelcited by 296
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  23. 2025ImgEdit: A Unified Image Editing Dataset and Benchmarkcited by 231
  24. 2024World Model on Million-Length Video And Language With Blockwise RingAttentioncited by 198
  25. 2025ViPE: Video Pose Engine for 3D Geometric Perceptioncited by 170
  26. 2025WorldMem: Long-term Consistent World Simulation with Memorycited by 168
  27. 2024Identity-Preserving Text-to-Video Generation by Frequency Decompositioncited by 158
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  35. 2025Sample More to Think Less: Group Filtered Policy Optimization for Concise Reasoningcited by 75
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  38. 2025Look-Back: Implicit Visual Re-focusing in MLLM Reasoningcited by 55

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  1. 2019Meta-Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Probabilistic Context Variables
  2. 2026WAM-RL: World-Action Model Reinforcement Learning with Reconstruction Rewards and Online Video SFT
  3. 2025Goal-Driven Reward by Video Diffusion Models for Reinforcement Learning
  4. 2023When Demonstrations Meet Generative World Models: A Maximum Likelihood Framework for Offline Inverse Reinforcement Learning
  5. 2026ReWorld: Multi-Dimensional Reward Modeling for Embodied World Models
  6. 2018A Survey of Inverse Reinforcement Learning: Challenges, Methods and Progress
  7. 2021Versatile Inverse Reinforcement Learning via Cumulative Rewards
  8. 2025From Demonstrations to Rewards: Alignment Without Explicit Human Preferences