EvoLMM: Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models with Continuous Rewards
On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning
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Abstract (arXiv)
Recent advances in large multimodal models (LMMs) have enabled impressive reasoning and perception abilities, yet most existing training pipelines still depend on human-curated data or externally verified reward models, limiting their autonomy and scalability. In this work, we strive to improve LMM reasoning capabilities in a purely unsupervised fashion (without any annotated data or reward distillation). To this end, we propose a self-evolving framework, named EvoLMM, that instantiates two cooperative agents from a single backbone model: a Proposer, which generates diverse, image-grounded questions, and a Solver, which solves them through internal consistency, where learning proceeds through a continuous self-rewarding process. This dynamic feedback encourages both the generation of informative queries and the refinement of structured reasoning without relying on ground-truth or human judgments. When using the popular Qwen2.5-VL as the base model, our EvoLMM yields consistent gains upto ~3% on multimodal math-reasoning benchmarks, including ChartQA, MathVista, and MathVision, using only raw training images. We hope our simple yet effective approach will serve as a solid baseline easing future research in self-improving LMMs in a fully-unsupervised fashion. Our code and models are available at https://github.com/mbzuai-oryx/EvoLMM.
Key facts. Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 44 of its 49 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Nov 2025.
Builds on
44 of 49 references.
Closest ancestors · 9
Same direction, newest first
- 2025MV-CoRe: Multimodal Visual-Conceptual Reasoning for Complex Visual Question Answering9 Aug
- 2025Fast or Slow? Integrating Fast Intuition and Deliberate Thinking for Enhancing Visual Question Answering1 Jun
- 2025MAGIC-VQA: Multimodal And Grounded Inference with Commonsense Knowledge for Visual Question Answering24 Mar
- 2025VisualPRM: An Effective Process Reward Model for Multimodal Reasoning13 Mar
- 2024HumanVLM: Foundation for Human-Scene Vision-Language Model5 Nov
- 2024UniBench: Visual Reasoning Requires Rethinking Vision-Language Beyond Scaling9 Aug
- 2024MathVerse: Does Your Multi-modal LLM Truly See the Diagrams in Visual Math Problems?21 Mar
- 2024Measuring Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning with MATH-Vision Dataset22 Feb
- 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts3 Oct
Other references · 35
- 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,084
- 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
- 2023QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMscited by 3,355
- 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,044
- 2022Learn to Explain: Multimodal Reasoning via Thought Chains for Science Question Answeringcited by 1,881
- 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,769
- 2025Gemma 3 Technical Reportcited by 1,686
- 2022ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoningcited by 1,449
- 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 973
- 2016A Diagram Is Worth A Dozen Imagescited by 793
- 2021InfographicVQAcited by 430
- 2025R1-Onevision: Advancing Generalized Multimodal Reasoning through Cross-Modal Formalizationcited by 364
23 more
- 2024LMMs-Eval: Reality Check on the Evaluation of Large Multimodal Modelscited by 344
- 2019PlotQA: Reasoning over Scientific Plotscited by 317
- 2025R1-VL: Learning to Reason with Multimodal Large Language Models via Step-wise Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 296
- 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agentscited by 294
- 2025OmniGen2: Towards Instruction-Aligned Multimodal Generationcited by 241
- 2023MMICL: Empowering Vision-language Model with Multi-Modal In-Context Learningcited by 171
- 2025LlamaV-o1: Rethinking Step-by-step Visual Reasoning in LLMscited by 145
- 2024ChartX & ChartVLM: A Versatile Benchmark and Foundation Model for Complicated Chart Reasoningcited by 127
- 2025Self-Rewarding Vision-Language Model via Reasoning Decompositioncited by 95
- 2024MMDU: A Multi-Turn Multi-Image Dialog Understanding Benchmark and Instruction-Tuning Dataset for LVLMscited by 89
- 2025Skywork R1V: Pioneering Multimodal Reasoning with Chain-of-Thoughtcited by 69
- 2025Can Large Reasoning Models Self-Train?cited by 66
- 2025Multi-Agent Evolve: LLM Self-Improve through Co-evolutioncited by 58
- 2025Self-Questioning Language Modelscited by 47
- 2024LLaVA-MoD: Making LLaVA Tiny via MoE Knowledge Distillationcited by 43
- 2024LLaVA-KD: A Framework of Distilling Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 37
- 2025Vision-Zero: Scalable VLM Self-Improvement via Strategic Gamified Self-Playcited by 37
- 2025Visual Attention Never Fades: Selective Progressive Attention ReCalibration for Detailed Image Captioning in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 21
- 2025OmniCaptioner: One Captioner to Rule Them Allcited by 19
- 2025Patch Matters: Training-free Fine-grained Image Caption Enhancement via Local Perceptioncited by 12
- 2025ViPER: Empowering the Self-Evolution of Visual Perception Abilities in Vision-Language Modelcited by 11
- 2025DescribeEarth: Describe Anything for Remote Sensing Imagescited by 5
- 2025Hierarchical Vision-Language Reasoning for Multimodal Multiple-Choice Question Answeringcited by 2
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 22.
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- 2026RISE: Reliable Improvement in Self-Evolving Vision-Language Modelscited by 1
- 2026DUEL: Adversarial Self-Play for Multimodal Reasoningcited by 1
- 2026AnE: Pushing the Reasoning Frontier of Multimodal LLMs via Anchor Evolutioncited by 1
- 2026Ouroboros-Spatial: Closing the Data-Model Loop for Spatial Reasoningcited by 1
- 2026Ask, Solve, Generate: Self-Evolving Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation via Self-Consistency Rewards25 Jun 2026
- 2026Paying More Attention to Visual Tokens in Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models25 Jun 2026
- 2026Ouroboros-Spatial: Closing the Data-Model Loop for Spatial Reasoning10 Jun 2026
- 2026AnE: Pushing the Reasoning Frontier of Multimodal LLMs via Anchor Evolution25 May 2026
- 2026DUEL: Adversarial Self-Play for Multimodal Reasoning24 May 2026
- 2026RISE: Reliable Improvement in Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models20 May 2026
- 2026SpatialEvo: Self-Evolving Spatial Intelligence via Deterministic Geometric Environments15 Apr 2026
- 2026MM-Zero: Self-Evolving Multi-Model Vision Language Models From Zero Data10 Mar 2026
- 2026iReasoner: Trajectory-Aware Intrinsic Reasoning Supervision for Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models9 Jan 2026
- 2025Agent0-VL: Exploring Self-Evolving Agent for Tool-Integrated Vision-Language Reasoning25 Nov 2025
- 2026Active Zero: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models through Active Environment Explorationcited by 7
- 2026Stabilizing Unsupervised Self-Evolution of MLLMs via Continuous Softened Retracing reSamplingcited by 3
- 2026EVE: Verifiable Self-Evolution of MLLMs via Executable Visual Transformationscited by 3
- 2026Perception Before Supervision: Self-Contained Visual Distillation from Counterfactual Blind Spotscited by 2
- 2026From Blind Spots to Gains: Diagnostic-Driven Iterative Training for Large Multimodal Modelscited by 0
- 2026Program-Verified Self-Evolution for Vision-Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026Program-Verified Self-Evolution for Vision-Language Models27 Sep 2026
- 2026Perception Before Supervision: Self-Contained Visual Distillation from Counterfactual Blind Spots10 Aug 2026
- 2026EVE: Verifiable Self-Evolution of MLLMs via Executable Visual Transformations20 Apr 2026
- 2026Stabilizing Unsupervised Self-Evolution of MLLMs via Continuous Softened Retracing reSampling4 Apr 2026
- 2026From Blind Spots to Gains: Diagnostic-Driven Iterative Training for Large Multimodal Models26 Feb 2026
- 2026Active Zero: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models through Active Environment Exploration11 Feb 2026
- 2026EvoGround: Self-Evolving Video Agents for Video Temporal Groundingcited by 3
- 2026Self-evolving Embodied AIcited by 2
- 2026EvoVid: Temporal-Centric Self-Evolution for Video Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026Unsupervised Post-Training of Foundation Models: A Surveycited by 0
- 2026Temporal Self-Distillation: Learning Visual State Tracking in Videos Without Supervisioncited by 0
- 2026Temporal Self-Distillation: Learning Visual State Tracking in Videos Without Supervision3 Sep 2026
- 2026Unsupervised Post-Training of Foundation Models: A Survey25 Aug 2026
- 2026EvoVid: Temporal-Centric Self-Evolution for Video Large Language Models21 May 2026
- 2026EvoGround: Self-Evolving Video Agents for Video Temporal Grounding13 May 2026
- 2026Self-evolving Embodied AI4 Feb 2026
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