AlphaGRPO: Unlocking Self-Reflective Multimodal Generation in UMMs via Decompositional Verifiable Reward
On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
In this paper, we propose AlphaGRPO, a novel framework that applies Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to AR-Diffusion Unified Multimodal Models (UMMs) to enhance multimodal generation capabilities without an additional cold-start stage. Our approach unlocks the model's intrinsic potential to perform advanced reasoning tasks: Reasoning Text-to-Image Generation, where the model actively infers implicit user intents, and Self-Reflective Refinement, where it autonomously diagnoses and corrects misalignments in generated outputs. To address the challenge of providing stable supervision for real-world multimodal generation, we introduce the Decompositional Verifiable Reward (DVReward). Unlike holistic scalar rewards, DVReward utilizes an LLM to decompose complex user requests into atomic, verifiable semantic and quality questions, which are then evaluated by a general MLLM to provide reliable and interpretable feedback. Extensive experiments demonstrate that AlphaGRPO yields robust improvements across multimodal generation benchmarks, including GenEval, TIIF-Bench, DPG-Bench and WISE, while also achieving significant gains in editing tasks on GEdit without training on editing tasks. These results validate that our self-reflective reinforcement approach effectively leverages inherent understanding to guide high-fidelity generation. Project page: https://huangrh99.github.io/AlphaGRPO/
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 52 of its 56 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.
Builds on
52 of 56 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Towards Unified Multimodal Interleaved Generation via Group Relative Policy Optimization10 Mar
- 2023Unified Language-Vision Pretraining in LLM with Dynamic Discrete Visual Tokenization9 Sep
Other references · 50
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
- 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
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- 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
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- 2023ImageReward: Learning and Evaluating Human Preferences for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,010
- 2023Large Language Models Cannot Self-Correct Reasoning Yetcited by 965
38 more
- 2023Pick-a-Pic: An Open Dataset of User Preferences for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 950
- 2023GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignmentcited by 946
- 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 904
- 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 855
- 2023Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 847
- 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 787
- 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 761
- 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 734
- 2023MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 615
- 2025Flow-GRPO: Training Flow Matching Models via Online RLcited by 605
- 2024ELLA: Equip Diffusion Models with LLM for Enhanced Semantic Alignmentcited by 455
- 2024Janus: Decoupling Visual Encoding for Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 447
- 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editingcited by 417
- 2025DanceGRPO: Unleashing GRPO on Visual Generationcited by 388
- 2025BLIP3-o: A Family of Fully Open Unified Multimodal Models-Architecture, Training and Datasetcited by 363
- 2024SEED-X: Multimodal Models with Unified Multi-granularity Comprehension and Generationcited by 328
- 2024PixArt-Sigma: Weak-to-Strong Training of Diffusion Transformer for 4K Text-to-Image Generationcited by 326
- 2024Hunyuan-DiT: A Powerful Multi-Resolution Diffusion Transformer with Fine-Grained Chinese Understandingcited by 294
- 2024AnyEdit: Mastering Unified High-Quality Image Editing for Any Ideacited by 235
- 2025Transfer between Modalities with MetaQueriescited by 231
- 2024MetaMorph: Multimodal Understanding and Generation via Instruction Tuningcited by 205
- 2024TokenFlow: Unified Image Tokenizer for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 200
- 2023VIEScore: Towards Explainable Metrics for Conditional Image Synthesis Evaluationcited by 196
- 2025WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 196
- 2025HPSv3: Towards Wide-Spectrum Human Preference Scorecited by 196
- 2025Unified Reward Model for Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 194
- 2023Davidsonian Scene Graph: Improving Reliability in Fine-grained Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 159
- 2024VisionReward: Fine-Grained Multi-Dimensional Human Preference Learning for Image and Video Generationcited by 148
- 2024LLaVA-Critic: Learning to Evaluate Multimodal Modelscited by 132
- 2025Mogao: An Omni Foundation Model for Interleaved Multi-Modal Generationcited by 108
- 2025Uniworld-V2: Reinforce Image Editing with Diffusion Negative-aware Finetuning and MLLM Implicit Feedbackcited by 78
- 2024ILLUME: Illuminating Your LLMs to See, Draw, and Self-Enhancecited by 64
- 2025TIIF-Bench: How Does Your T2I Model Follow Your Instructions?cited by 64
- 2025ILLUME+: Illuminating Unified MLLM with Dual Visual Tokenization and Diffusion Refinementcited by 53
- 2025Reconstruction Alignment Improves Unified Multimodal Modelscited by 48
- 2025Interleaving Reasoning for Better Text-to-Image Generationcited by 40
- 2025UniRL: Self-Improving Unified Multimodal Models via Supervised and Reinforcement Learningcited by 23
- 2025Does Understanding Inform Generation in Unified Multimodal Models? From Analysis to Path Forwardcited by 9
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.
3 papers.
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- 2025CRAFT: Continuous Reasoning and Agentic Feedback Tuning for Multimodal Text-to-Image Generation
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- 2026When Models Judge Themselves: Unsupervised Self-Evolution for Multimodal Reasoning
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