Rethinking Reward Signals in Video GRPO: When Scores Become Targets
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Abstract (arXiv)
Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) enables stable and preference-oriented updates via group-wise comparisons for post-training video generation. However, GRPO directly optimizes reward-induced advantages. Under sustained optimization, the reward score can lose fidelity as a proxy for true video quality, consistent with the phenomenon described by Goodhart's Law. This leads to two recurring issues: (i) shortcut-driven optimization under composite objectives and (ii) reward saturation within prompt groups. To address these issues, we introduce TaRoS, a Target-Robust Reward Signaling framework for Video generation GRPO. TaRoS leverages component level performance assessment together with intra-group sparsity to organize multi-aspect rewards towards optimization objectives. In addition, it adaptively downweights components that exhibit saturation, thereby preserving effective optimization directions and mitigating redundancy. This maintains meaningful optimization directions and preserves within-group ranking separation, thereby preventing reward hacking and leading to more reliable policy updates. Extensive experiments show consistent improvements in visual fidelity, motion coherence, and text-video alignment over strong baselines.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 35 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Nov 2025.
Builds on
35 of 42 references.
References · 35
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23 more
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.
5 papers.
- 2026TeleBoost: A Systematic Alignment Framework for High-Fidelity, Controllable, and Robust Video Generationcited by 5
- 2026Advances in GRPO for Generation Models: A Surveycited by 1
- 2026Reward-Aware Trajectory Shaping for Few-step Visual Generationcited by 1
- 2026Learning to Credit the Right Steps: Objective-aware Process Optimization for Visual Generationcited by 1
- 2026Scaling Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Models via Velocity Matchingcited by 1
- 2026Scaling Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion Models via Velocity Matching24 Aug 2026
- 2026Learning to Credit the Right Steps: Objective-aware Process Optimization for Visual Generation21 Apr 2026
- 2026Reward-Aware Trajectory Shaping for Few-step Visual Generation16 Apr 2026
- 2026Advances in GRPO for Generation Models: A Survey21 Feb 2026
- 2026TeleBoost: A Systematic Alignment Framework for High-Fidelity, Controllable, and Robust Video Generation7 Feb 2026
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- 2026STAR-GRPO: Canonical Anchoring and Reliability-First Advantages against Representation-Dependent Reward Hacking
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