RS-Gen: A Multi-Stage Agentic Framework for Reasoning and Search-Augmented Image Generation
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents
Abstract (arXiv)
Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress in image generation and editing, particularly regarding instruction following and visual fidelity. However, when handling ambiguous intentions, logical reasoning, and Out-of-Distribution (OOD) knowledge, existing image models often yield sub-optimal results due to a lack of deep reasoning capabilities and real-time external information. Although emerging unified understanding-and-generation models attempt to bridge this gap, they remain constrained by their intrinsic parameter scales and static knowledge gaps. Inspired by agentic paradigms, we propose RS-Gen: a plug-and-play, training-free, multi-stage image agentic framework. RS-Gen innovatively introduces a "Questioning-and-Solving" closed-loop mechanism to accurately identify logical issues and knowledge gaps, autonomously planning actions to bridge information deficits and execute deep logical reasoning. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RS-Gen significantly expands the capability boundaries of foundational image generation and editing models. Specifically, on the WISE Verified and RISEBench benchmarks, RS-Gen yields substantial absolute performance gains of 0.313 for Qwen-Image and 19.70 for Qwen-Image-Edit-2511, respectively, successfully elevating both to the state-of-the-art (SOTA) level among open-source models.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 26 of its 35 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Jun 2026.
Builds on
26 of 35 references.
Closest ancestors · 3
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Unify-Agent: A Unified Multimodal Agent for World-Grounded Image Synthesis31 Mar
- 2026Gen-Searcher: Reinforcing Agentic Search for Image Generation30 Mar
- 2026Mind-Brush: Integrating Agentic Cognitive Search and Reasoning into Image Generation2 Feb
Other references · 23
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,599
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
- 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,611
- 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 927
- 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 897
- 2024Show-o: One Single Transformer to Unify Multimodal Understanding and Generationcited by 752
- 2023MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editingcited by 624
11 more
- 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
- 2025Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editingcited by 429
- 2023Emu Edit: Precise Image Editing via Recognition and Generation Taskscited by 324
- 2025Z-Image: An Efficient Image Generation Foundation Model with Single-Stream Diffusion Transformercited by 277
- 2025Seedream 4.0: Toward Next-generation Multimodal Image Generationcited by 249
- 2025WISE: A World Knowledge-Informed Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 204
- 2024HQ-Edit: A High-Quality Dataset for Instruction-based Image Editingcited by 193
- 2025LongCat-Image Technical Reportcited by 100
- 2025Envisioning Beyond the Pixels: Benchmarking Reasoning-Informed Visual Editingcited by 99
- 2026GenEvolve: Self-Evolving Image Generation Agents via Tool-Orchestrated Visual Experience Distillationcited by 19
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026Exploring the Performance Frontier of Compact Unified Image Generation Modelscited by 2
- 2026WeAgent-MMGenEdit: A Full-Stack Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Image Generation and Editingcited by 1
- 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 1
- 2026InfoAgent: Traceable Generation and Repair of Evidence-Grounded Infographicscited by 0
- 2026Reasoning-Informed Visual Editingcited by 0
- 2026MotionCoach: Constructing Multimodal Guidance for Video Professional Motion Editingcited by 0
- 2026How Far Can Coding Agents Go in Visual Generation?cited by 0
- 2026How Far Can Coding Agents Go in Visual Generation?13 Oct 2026
- 2026MotionCoach: Constructing Multimodal Guidance for Video Professional Motion Editing9 Oct 2026
- 2026Reasoning-Informed Visual Editing8 Oct 2026
- 2026InfoAgent: Traceable Generation and Repair of Evidence-Grounded Infographics30 Sep 2026
- 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Control6 Sep 2026
- 2026WeAgent-MMGenEdit: A Full-Stack Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Image Generation and Editing4 Sep 2026
- 2026Exploring the Performance Frontier of Compact Unified Image Generation Models20 Aug 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026GenAgent: Scaling Text-to-Image Generation via Agentic Multimodal Reasoning
- 2026Unified Thinker: A General Reasoning Modular Core for Image Generation
- 2025R-Genie: Reasoning-Guided Generative Image Editing
- 2026Qwen-Image-Agent: Bridging the Context Gap in Real-World Image Generation
- 2026ExpertVerse: A General-Purpose Benchmark for Expert-Level Reasoning in Knowledge-Intensive Visual Synthesis
- 2026M3: High-fidelity Text-to-Image Generation via Multi-Modal, Multi-Agent and Multi-Round Visual Reasoning
- 2026GenRouter: Unified Workflow Routing for Agentic Image Generation
- 2026Thinking in Pictures: A Systematic Benchmark for Reasoning-driven Image Generation