# Domain-Invariant Prompt Learning for Vision-Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28555 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28555/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Prompt learning and adaptation of CLIP, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 18 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Prompt learning and adaptation of CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/prompt-learning-and-adaptation-of-clip/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Scaling Up Visual and Vision-Language Representation Learning With Noisy Text Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05918/) (2021)
- [The Power of Scale for Parameter-Efficient Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08691/) (2021)
- [Domain-Adversarial Training of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.07818/) (2015)
- [Learning to Prompt for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01134/) (2021)
- [Conditional Prompt Learning for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05557/) (2022)
- [VisualBERT: A Simple and Performant Baseline for Vision and Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03557/) (2019)
- [CLIP-Adapter: Better Vision-Language Models with Feature Adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04544/) (2021)
- [Deeper, Broader and Artier Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03077/) (2017)
- [Domain Generalization: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02503/) (2021)
- [Domain Adaptation via Prompt Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06687/) (2022)
- [Embodied Multi-Modal Agent trained by an LLM from a Parallel TextWorld](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16714/) (2023)
- [AD-CLIP: Adapting Domains in Prompt Space Using CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05659/) (2023)
- [Source-Free Domain Adaptation with Frozen Multimodal Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16510/) (2023)
- [Domain Generalization through Meta-Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02785/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Domain Adaptation and Generalization in the Era of CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15173/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large pre-trained vision-language models like CLIP have transformed computer vision by aligning images and text in a shared feature space, enabling robust zero-shot transfer via prompting. Soft-prompting, such as Context Optimization (CoOp), effectively adapts these models for downstream recognition tasks by learning a set of context vectors. However, CoOp lacks explicit mechanisms for handling domain shifts across unseen distributions. To address this, we propose Domain-invariant Context Optimization (DiCoOp), an extension of CoOp optimized for domain generalization. By employing an adversarial training approach, DiCoOp forces the model to learn domain-invariant prompts while preserving discriminative power for classification. Experimental results show that DiCoOp consistently surpasses CoOp in domain generalization tasks across diverse visual domains.
