mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

GenEvolve: Self-Evolving Image Generation Agents via Tool-Orchestrated Visual Experience Distillation

arXiv 2605.21605 ↗First posted 20 May 2026cs.CVcited by 19

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Abstract (arXiv)

Open-ended image generation is no longer a simple prompt-to-image problem. High-quality generation often requires an agent to combine a model's internal generative ability with external resources. As requests become more diverse and demanding, we aim to develop a general image-generation agent that can self-evolve through trajectories and use tools more effectively across varied generation challenges. To this end, we propose GenEvolve, a self-evolving framework based on Tool-Orchestrated Visual Experience Distillation. In GenEvolve, each generation attempt is modeled as a tool-orchestrated trajectory, where the agent gathers evidence, selects references, invokes generation skills, and composes them into a prompt-reference program. Unlike existing agentic generation methods that mainly rely on image-level scalar rewards, GenEvolve compares multiple trajectories for the same request and abstracts best-worst differences into structured visual experience, provided only to a privileged teacher branch. Inspired by on-policy self-distillation, Visual Experience Distillation provides dense token-level supervision, helping the student internalize better search, knowledge activation, reference selection, and prompt construction. We further construct GenEvolve-Data and GenEvolve-Bench. Experiments on public benchmarks and GenEvolve-Bench show substantial gains over strong baselines, achieving state-of-the-art performance among current image-generation frameworks. Our website is as follows: https://ephemeral182.github.io/GenEvolve/

Key facts. Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 40 of its 71 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 May 2026.

Builds on

40 of 71 references.

References · 40

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  3. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,585
  4. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,355
  5. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 6,054
  6. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  7. 2025Qwen3-VL Technical Reportcited by 2,793
  8. 2024LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Modelscited by 1,464
  9. 2025Qwen-Image Technical Reportcited by 1,044
  10. 2025FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Spacecited by 1,006
  11. 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 927
  12. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 897
28 more
  1. 2023PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 864
  2. 2024Emu3: Next-Token Prediction is All You Needcited by 781
  3. 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 752
  4. 2026Self-Distilled Reasoner: On-Policy Self-Distillation for Large Language Modelscited by 455
  5. 2025BLIP3-o: A Family of Fully Open Unified Multimodal Models-Architecture, Training and Datasetcited by 376
  6. 2026Reinforcement Learning via Self-Distillationcited by 332
  7. 2025Z-Image: An Efficient Image Generation Foundation Model with Single-Stream Diffusion Transformercited by 277
  8. 2025WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 204
  9. 2026On-Policy Context Distillation for Language Modelscited by 186
  10. 2025HunyuanImage 3.0 Technical Reportcited by 149
  11. 2025LongCat-Image Technical Reportcited by 100
  12. 2025Lumina-Image 2.0: A Unified and Efficient Image Generative Frameworkcited by 96
  13. 2026Skill-SD: Skill-Conditioned Self-Distillation for Multi-turn LLM Agentscited by 90
  14. 2025Uniworld-V2: Reinforce Image Editing with Diffusion Negative-aware Finetuning and MLLM Implicit Feedbackcited by 79
  15. 2026HDPO: Hybrid Distillation Policy Optimization via Privileged Self-Distillationcited by 42
  16. 2025PosterCraft: Rethinking High-Quality Aesthetic Poster Generation in a Unified Frameworkcited by 40
  17. 2026Gen-Searcher: Reinforcing Agentic Search for Image Generationcited by 30
  18. 2025On a few pitfalls in KL divergence gradient estimation for RLcited by 29
  19. 2026GenAgent: Scaling Text-to-Image Generation via Agentic Multimodal Reasoningcited by 24
  20. 2026Mind-Brush: Integrating Agentic Cognitive Search and Reasoning into Image Generationcited by 23
  21. 2026GEMS: Agent-Native Multimodal Generation with Memory and Skillscited by 21
  22. 2025Maestro: Self-Improving Text-to-Image Generation via Agent Orchestrationcited by 19
  23. 2025Rethinking KL Regularization in RLHF: From Value Estimation to Gradient Optimizationcited by 14
  24. 2026NextFlow: Unified Sequential Modeling Activates Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 14
  25. 2026DeepGen 1.0: A Lightweight Unified Multimodal Model for Advancing Image Generation and Editingcited by 14
  26. 2026PosterOmni: Generalized Artistic Poster Creation via Task Distillation and Unified Reward Feedbackcited by 9
  27. 2025Open Multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Factual Image Generationcited by 6
  28. 2025CRAFT: Continuous Reasoning and Agentic Feedback Tuning for Multimodal Text-to-Image Generationcited by 6

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 19.

19 papers.

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  1. 2026RS-Gen: A Multi-Stage Agentic Framework for Reasoning and Search-Augmented Image Generationcited by 7
  2. 2026GenRouter: Unified Workflow Routing for Agentic Image Generationcited by 5
  3. 2026ToolArtist: Tool-Using Unified Multimodal Models for Agentic Image Generationcited by 4
  4. 2026MemoGen: Can Past Experience Improve Future Text-to-Image Generation?cited by 3
  5. 2026DeepSearch-World: Self-Distillation for Deep Search Agents in a Verifiable Environmentcited by 2
  6. 2026OmniHarness: Harnessing Generalizable Visual Generation via Symbolic Policy Learningcited by 2
  7. 2026JarvisHub: An Open Harness for Canvas-Native Multimodal Creative Agentscited by 1
  8. 2026WeAgent-MMGenEdit: A Full-Stack Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Image Generation and Editingcited by 1
  9. 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 1
  10. 2026SCOPE: Score-Isolated Agentic Optimization for Video World Modelscited by 0
  11. 2026AgenticGen: Reward-Guided Agentic Video Generation for Advertisingcited by 0
  12. 2026SkillPE: Creativity-Oriented Cinematic Skill Evolution for Text-to-Video Prompt Engineeringcited by 0
7 more
  1. 2026AutoRef: Harness Optimization for Agentic Multi-Reference Image Generationcited by 0
  2. 2026InfoAgent: Traceable Generation and Repair of Evidence-Grounded Infographicscited by 0
  3. 2026EvoGen-Harness: Learning Where and How to Evolve Image-Generation Harnessescited by 0
  4. 2026Internalizing Agent Experience into Diffusion Model Weights via On-Policy Context Distillationcited by 0
  5. 2026MotionCoach: Constructing Multimodal Guidance for Video Professional Motion Editingcited by 0
  6. 2026Stride: Scale-Aware Multi-Agent Evolutionary Refinement for Infographic Generationcited by 0
  7. 2026RSIgen: Reciprocal Self-Improvement for Agentic Visual Generationcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026ManimAgent: Self-Evolving Multimodal Agents for Visual Education
  2. 2026VideoGen-Agent: Reinforcing Video Generation Agents
  3. 2026GenClaw: Code-Driven Agentic Image Generation
  4. 2025Integrating Reinforcement Learning with Visual Generative Models: Foundations and Advances
  5. 2026Search Beyond What Can Be Taught: Evolving the Knowledge Boundary in Agentic Visual Generation
  6. 2026COMFYCLAW: Self-Evolving Skill Harnesses for Image Generation Workflows
  7. 2024DiffusionAgent: Navigating Expert Models for Agentic Image Generation
  8. 2026SymbOmni: Evolving Agentic Omni Models via Symbolic Concept Learning