mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Mind-Brush: Integrating Agentic Cognitive Search and Reasoning into Image Generation

arXiv 2602.01756 ↗First posted 2 Feb 2026cs.CVcited by 18

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents

Abstract (arXiv)

While text-to-image generation has achieved unprecedented fidelity, the vast majority of existing models function fundamentally as static text-to-pixel decoders. Consequently, they often fail to grasp implicit user intentions. Although emerging unified understanding-generation models have improved intent comprehension, they still struggle to accomplish tasks involving complex knowledge reasoning within a single model. Moreover, constrained by static internal priors, these models remain unable to adapt to the evolving dynamics of the real world. To bridge these gaps, we introduce Mind-Brush, a unified agentic framework that transforms generation into a dynamic, knowledge-driven workflow. Simulating a human-like 'think-research-create' paradigm, Mind-Brush actively retrieves multimodal evidence to ground out-of-distribution concepts and employs reasoning tools to resolve implicit visual constraints. To rigorously evaluate these capabilities, we propose Mind-Bench, a comprehensive benchmark comprising 500 distinct samples spanning real-time news, emerging concepts, and domains such as mathematical and Geo-Reasoning. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Mind-Brush significantly enhances the capabilities of unified models, realizing a zero-to-one capability leap for the Qwen-Image baseline on Mind-Bench, while achieving superior results on established benchmarks like WISE and RISE.

Key facts. Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 43 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.

Builds on

43 of 54 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026GenAgent: Scaling Text-to-Image Generation via Agentic Multimodal Reasoning26 Jan
  2. 2025T2I-Copilot: A Training-Free Multi-Agent Text-to-Image System for Enhanced Prompt Interpretation and Interactive Generation28 Jul
  3. 2025MCCD: Multi-Agent Collaboration-based Compositional Diffusion for Complex Text-to-Image Generation5 May

Other references · 40

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  2. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  3. 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,650
  4. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  5. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
  6. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
  7. 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 973
  8. 2023GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignmentcited by 946
  9. 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 904
  10. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 855
  11. 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 787
  12. 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 761
28 more
  1. 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 734
  2. 2024MathVerse: Does Your Multi-modal LLM Truly See the Diagrams in Visual Math Problems?cited by 573
  3. 2024Transfusion: Predict the Next Token and Diffuse Images with One Multi-Modal Modelcited by 468
  4. 2025Search-o1: Agentic Search-Enhanced Large Reasoning Modelscited by 423
  5. 2025BLIP3-o: A Family of Fully Open Unified Multimodal Models-Architecture, Training and Datasetcited by 363
  6. 2025Z-Image: An Efficient Image Generation Foundation Model with Single-Stream Diffusion Transformercited by 247
  7. 2025OmniGen2: Towards Instruction-Aligned Multimodal Generationcited by 241
  8. 2025ImgEdit: A Unified Image Editing Dataset and Benchmarkcited by 225
  9. 2025WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 196
  10. 2025Thinking with Images for Multimodal Reasoning: Foundations, Methods, and Future Frontierscited by 193
  11. 2025T2I-R1: Reinforcing Image Generation with Collaborative Semantic-level and Token-level CoTcited by 162
  12. 2025Envisioning Beyond the Pixels: Benchmarking Reasoning-Informed Visual Editingcited by 97
  13. 2025Echo-4o: Harnessing the Power of GPT-4o Synthetic Images for Improved Image Generationcited by 95
  14. 2025Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation Models: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 81
  15. 2024MindSearch: Mimicking Human Minds Elicits Deep AI Searchercited by 65
  16. 2025Seedream 2.0: A Native Chinese-English Bilingual Image Generation Foundation Modelcited by 59
  17. 2025From Reflection to Perfection: Scaling Inference-Time Optimization for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via Reflection Tuningcited by 53
  18. 2024Auto-RAG: Autonomous Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Modelscited by 41
  19. 2025T2I-ReasonBench: Benchmarking Reasoning-Informed Text-to-Image Generationcited by 38
  20. 2024PhyBench: A Physical Commonsense Benchmark for Evaluating Text-to-Image Modelscited by 36
  21. 2025PromptSculptor: Multi-Agent Based Text-to-Image Prompt Optimizationcited by 19
  22. 2026Think-Then-Generate: Reasoning-Aware Text-to-Image Diffusion with LLM Encoderscited by 15
  23. 2025CREA: A Collaborative Multi-Agent Framework for Creative Image Editing and Generationcited by 13
  24. 2025Unified Multimodal Models as Auto-Encoderscited by 13
  25. 2025DraCo: Draft as CoT for Text-to-Image Preview and Rare Concept Generationcited by 13
  26. 2025World-To-Image: Grounding Text-to-Image Generation with Agent-Driven World Knowledgecited by 4
  27. 20245W1H Extraction With Large Language Modelscited by 3
  28. 2025IA-T2I: Internet-Augmented Text-to-Image Generationcited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 18.

18 papers.

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  1. 2026Gen-Searcher: Reinforcing Agentic Search for Image Generationcited by 25
  2. 2026GenEvolve: Self-Evolving Image Generation Agents via Tool-Orchestrated Visual Experience Distillationcited by 15
  3. 2026GenClaw: Code-Driven Agentic Image Generationcited by 10
  4. 2026Qwen-Image-Agent: Bridging the Context Gap in Real-World Image Generationcited by 8
  5. 2026SCOPE: Structured Decomposition and Conditional Skill Orchestration for Complex Image Generationcited by 6
  6. 2026WorldClaw: Agentic 3D Open-World Generation at Scalecited by 6
  7. 2026RS-Gen: A Multi-Stage Agentic Framework for Reasoning and Search-Augmented Image Generationcited by 5
  8. 2026GenRouter: Unified Workflow Routing for Agentic Image Generationcited by 4
  9. 2026FakeVLM-R1: Internalizing Physical Laws via CoT for Synthetic Image Detectioncited by 3
  10. 2026MemoGen: Can Past Experience Improve Future Text-to-Image Generation?cited by 2
  11. 2026PosterMELD: Multi-Agent Paper-to-Poster Generation for Controllable Design Diversity with Editable Print-Ready Outputscited by 1
  12. 2026One Query, Many Scales: Sparse Mixture-of-Experts for Efficient Hierarchical Cross-View Geo-Localizationcited by 0
6 more
  1. 2026Thinking in Pictures: A Systematic Benchmark for Reasoning-driven Image Generationcited by 0
  2. 2026Editable Visual Designcited by 0
  3. 2026WeAgent-MMGenEdit: A Full-Stack Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Image Generation and Editingcited by 0
  4. 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 0
  5. 2026SkillPE: Creativity-Oriented Cinematic Skill Evolution for Text-to-Video Prompt Engineeringcited by 0
  6. 2026Reasoning-Informed Visual Editingcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Thinking with Generated Images
  2. 2025TIR-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Agentic Thinking-with-Images Reasoning
  3. 2025Machine Mental Imagery: Empower Multimodal Reasoning with Latent Visual Tokens
  4. 2025Reasoning Within the Mind: Dynamic Multimodal Interleaving in Latent Space
  5. 2026VISOR: Agentic Visual Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Iterative Search and Over-horizon Reasoning
  6. 2026Think in Strokes, Not Pixels: Process-Driven Image Generation via Interleaved Reasoning
  7. 2026Diversity Over Frequency: Rethinking Tool Use in Visual Chain-of-Thought Agents
  8. 2025ThinkMorph: Emergent Properties in Multimodal Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning