Trinity: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models with a Self-Verifier
On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning
also in 2 more
Abstract (arXiv)
Self-evolving vision-language models (VLMs), a form of self-improvement in which a model generates its own training data from unlabeled images, are a promising route toward agents that expand their reasoning capability in an unsupervised manner, without relying on ever-larger annotation budgets. Existing methods pair a Questioner that proposes problems with a Solver that answers them, but reward both roles mainly by agreement among sampled answers. Agreement is a weak proxy for truth: it cannot tell whether a question is grounded in the image, whether the proposed reference answer is right, or whether a confident majority is wrong in the same way. We present Trinity, in which one VLM plays three roles, Questioner, Solver, and Verifier, and the Verifier is a self-verifier: an exponential moving average (EMA) of the policy itself, requiring neither labels nor an external judge. The Verifier screens every generated question for image grounding and answer correctness before it becomes supervision, scores Solver reasoning against the image, and adjudicates disputes between the reference answer and a strong Solver consensus, correcting the reference and penalizing the Questioner when the consensus is right. Trained on images alone, Trinity improves Qwen3-VL-8B on mathematical visual reasoning and on science benchmarks with biology content, for example, +8.6 points on the biology split of SciVQR and +12.8 on MathVerse, and its reward dynamics behave as a healthy self-play curriculum should. These results suggest that a self-evolving multimodal agent can strengthen its scientific reasoning from unlabeled scientific images alone, with the model itself serving as the verifier.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 26 of its 36 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2026.
Builds on
26 of 36 references.
Closest ancestors · 8
Same direction, newest first
- 2026SciVQR: A Multidisciplinary Multimodal Benchmark for Advanced Scientific Reasoning Evaluation11 May
- 2026Vero: An Open RL Recipe for General Visual Reasoning6 Apr
- 2026MM-Zero: Self-Evolving Multi-Model Vision Language Models From Zero Data10 Mar
- 2026V-Zero: Self-Improving Multimodal Reasoning with Zero Annotation15 Jan
- 2026iReasoner: Trajectory-Aware Intrinsic Reasoning Supervision for Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models9 Jan
- 2025Agent0-VL: Exploring Self-Evolving Agent for Tool-Integrated Vision-Language Reasoning25 Nov
- 2024Measuring Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning with MATH-Vision Dataset22 Feb
- 2023MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts3 Oct
Other references · 18
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
- 2025Qwen3-VL Technical Reportcited by 2,793
- 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,080
- 2025Group Sequence Policy Optimizationcited by 835
- 2024Self-Rewarding Language Modelscited by 681
- 2024MathVerse: Does Your Multi-modal LLM Truly See the Diagrams in Visual Math Problems?cited by 586
- 2025Absolute Zero: Reinforced Self-play Reasoning with Zero Datacited by 344
- 2026Gemma 4 Technical Reportcited by 259
- 2025R-Zero: Self-Evolving Reasoning LLM from Zero Datacited by 228
- 2026Molmo2: Open Weights and Data for Vision-Language Models with Video Understanding and Groundingcited by 139
- 2025EvoLMM: Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models with Continuous Rewardscited by 27
6 more
- 2026Innovator-VL: A Multimodal Large Language Model for Scientific Discoverycited by 8
- 2026Active Zero: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models through Active Environment Explorationcited by 8
- 2026Unified Generation and Self-Verification for Vision-Language Models via Advantage Decoupled Preference Optimizationcited by 7
- 2025MME-SCI: A Comprehensive and Challenging Science Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 6
- 2026OmniScience: A Large-scale Multi-modal Dataset for Scientific Image Understandingcited by 5
- 2026From Blind Spots to Gains: Diagnostic-Driven Iterative Training for Large Multimodal Modelscited by 1
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- 2026Self-Questioning Vision-Language Models: Reinforcement Learning for Compositional Visual Reasoning
- 2025VisPlay: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models from Images
- 2025Sherlock: Self-Correcting Reasoning in Vision-Language Models
- 2025Towards Self-Refinement of Vision-Language Models with Triangular Consistency
- 2025Automated Generation of Challenging Multiple-Choice Questions for Vision Language Model Evaluation