Images in Sentences: Scaling Interleaved Instructions for Unified Visual Generation
On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → MLLM training and visual instruction tuning
Abstract (arXiv)
While recent advancements in multimodal language models have enabled image generation from expressive multi-image instructions, existing methods struggle to maintain performance under complex interleaved instructions. This limitation stems from the structural separation of images and text in current paradigms, which forces models to bridge difficult long-range dependencies to match descriptions with visual targets. To address these challenges, we propose textttImages itextttN textttSEntextttTences (textita.k.a, INSET), a unified generation model that seamlessly embeds images as native vocabulary within textual instructions. By positioning visual features directly at their corresponding semantic slots, INSET leverages the contextual locality of transformers for precise object binding, effectively treating images as dense, expressive language tokens. Furthermore, we introduce a scalable data engine that synthesizes 15M high-quality interleaved samples from standard image and video datasets, utilizing VLMs and LLMs to construct rich, long-horizon sequences. Evaluation results on InterleaveBench demonstrate that INSET significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in multi-image consistency and text alignment, with performance gaps widening as input complexity increases. Beyond standard generation, our approach inherently extends to multimodal image editing, integrating visual content as part of the instruction to facilitate highly expressive and creative visual manipulations.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in MLLM training and visual instruction tuning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 42 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.
Builds on
42 of 46 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2023Generative Multimodal Models are In-Context Learners20 Dec
- 2023Kosmos-G: Generating Images in Context with Multimodal Large Language Models4 Oct
Other references · 40
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- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
- 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
- 2023Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contextscited by 3,455
- 2023IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1,464
28 more
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- 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 897
- 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 812
- 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 781
- 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 752
- 2024Transfusion: Predict the Next Token and Diffuse Images with One Multi-Modal Modelcited by 483
- 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 457
- 2024InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Secondscited by 436
- 2023ELITE: Encoding Visual Concepts into Textual Embeddings for Customized Text-to-Image Generationcited by 416
- 2024OmniGen: Unified Image Generationcited by 394
- 2025BLIP3-o: A Family of Fully Open Unified Multimodal Models-Architecture, Training and Datasetcited by 376
- 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 373
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- 2025Seedream 4.0: Toward Next-generation Multimodal Image Generationcited by 249
- 2023Multimodal C4: An Open, Billion-scale Corpus of Images Interleaved with Textcited by 208
- 2024JanusFlow: Harmonizing Autoregression and Rectified Flow for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 163
- 2024DreamBench++: A Human-Aligned Benchmark for Personalized Image Generationcited by 131
- 2025Mogao: An Omni Foundation Model for Interleaved Multi-Modal Generationcited by 109
- 2025Echo-4o: Harnessing the Power of GPT-4o Synthetic Images for Improved Image Generationcited by 100
- 2025SimpleAR: Pushing the Frontier of Autoregressive Visual Generation through Pretraining, SFT, and RLcited by 86
- 2025Describe Anything: Detailed Localized Image and Video Captioningcited by 84
- 2025DreamO: A Unified Framework for Image Customizationcited by 83
- 2025Harmonizing Visual Representations for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 74
- 2024OmniCorpus: A Unified Multimodal Corpus of 10 Billion-Level Images Interleaved with Textcited by 59
- 2025Skywork UniPic 2.0: Building Kontext Model with Online RL for Unified Multimodal Modelcited by 41
- 2025DreamOmni2: Multimodal Instruction-based Editing and Generationcited by 38
- 2025Skywork UniPic: Unified Autoregressive Modeling for Visual Understanding and Generationcited by 17
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
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- 2025DeCoT: Decomposing Complex Instructions for Enhanced Text-to-Image Generation with Large Language Models
- 2023InstructCV: Instruction-Tuned Text-to-Image Diffusion Models as Vision Generalists
- 2024MM-Instruct: Generated Visual Instructions for Large Multimodal Model Alignment
- 2026Instruction Distillation: Text Instructions as Visual Examples
- 2026Global Context Compression with Interleaved Vision-Text Transformation
- 2025Growing Visual Generative Capacity for Pre-Trained MLLMs