# LIGE-GR: A Smooth Leap from Ranking to Generative Recommendation in the LLM Era

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.18148 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.18148/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [Self-Attentive Sequential Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.09781/) (2018)
- [BERT4Rec: Sequential Recommendation with Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06690/) (2019)
- [Wide & Deep Learning for Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.07792/) (2016)
- [Session-based Recommendations with Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06939/) (2015)
- [DeepFM: A Factorization-Machine based Neural Network for CTR Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04247/) (2017)
- [Deep Interest Network for Click-Through Rate Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06978/) (2017)
- [Personalized Top-N Sequential Recommendation via Convolutional Sequence Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07426/) (2018)
- [Recommendation as Language Processing (RLP): A Unified Pretrain, Personalized Prompt & Predict Paradigm (P5)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13366/) (2022)
- [Deep & Cross Network for Ad Click Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.05123/) (2017)
- [Flow Network based Generative Models for Non-Iterative Diverse Candidate Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04399/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Large Language Models for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19860/) (2023)
- [DCN V2: Improved Deep & Cross Network and Practical Lessons for Web-scale Learning to Rank Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13535/) (2020)
- [Transformer Memory as a Differentiable Search Index](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06991/) (2022)
- [Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05065/) (2023)
- [Actions Speak Louder than Words: Trillion-Parameter Sequential Transducers for Generative Recommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17152/) (2024)
- [OneRec: Unifying Retrieve and Rank with Generative Recommender and Iterative Preference Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18965/) (2025)
- [Practice on Long Sequential User Behavior Modeling for Click-Through Rate Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.09248/) (2019)
- [Learning a Deep Listwise Context Model for Ranking Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.05936/) (2018)
- [SetRank: Learning a Permutation-Invariant Ranking Model for Information Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05891/) (2019)
- [Seq2Slate: Re-ranking and Slate Optimization with RNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02019/) (2018)
- [TransAct: Transformer-based Realtime User Action Model for Recommendation at Pinterest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00248/) (2023)
- [Beyond Greedy Ranking: Slate Optimization via List-CVAE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.01682/) (2018)
- [Generative Flow Network for Listwise Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02239/) (2023)
- [Non-autoregressive Generative Models for Reranking Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06871/) (2024)
- [Revisit Recommender System in the Permutation Prospective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12057/) (2021)
- [Sliding Spectrum Decomposition for Diversified Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05204/) (2021)
- [GRN: Generative Rerank Network for Context-wise Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00860/) (2021)
- [PEAR: Personalized Re-ranking with Contextualized Transformer for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12267/) (2022)
- [Sequential Evaluation and Generation Framework for Combinatorial Recommender System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00245/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The remarkable success of large language models (LLMs) has provided important inspiration for the next generation of recommender systems. Structurally, recommendation and language generation share a similarity: both aim to produce an ordered sequence that optimizes the user's experience. However, how to precisely absorb the essence of the LLM paradigm into mature industrial recommender systems remains an open problem. There are two challenges. First, it is unclear how to incorporate the LLM paradigm -- sequence-level generation and optimization -- into recommendation. Second, real-world recommender systems are mature systems that have been iteratively customized for years around specific products, business constraints, serving infrastructure, and organizational ownership. Replacing such systems wholesale is often technically risky and organizationally disruptive. In this paper, we propose LIGE-GR, a listwise generation and evaluation recommendation framework that upgrades from a traditional ranking system (itemwise recommendation) toward a generative recommendation paradigm. Instead of rebuilding the entire recommendation stack from scratch, LIGE-GR generalizes the existing pointwise recommendation system into a listwise generation system. This allows mature recommender systems to benefit from listwise optimization while preserving compatibility with existing models, value functions, and serving infrastructure. We validate LIGE-GR in short-video recommendation on Instagram Reels and Facebook Video. On these recommendation surfaces, LIGE-GR improves time spent by 1.14 percent on Instagram Reels and 0.72 percent on Facebook Video, while requiring only modest additional inference resources.