Multimodal Large Language Models with Adaptive Preference Optimization for Sequential Recommendation
Abstract
Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have opened new avenues for sequential recommendation by enabling natural language reasoning over user behavior sequences. A common approach formulates recommendation as a language modeling task, where interaction histories are transformed into prompts and user preferences are learned via supervised fine-tuning. However, these methods operate solely in the textual modality and often miss users' fine-grained interests, especially when shaped by rich visual signals such as product images or movie posters. Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) offer a promising alternative by aligning text and vision in a shared semantic space. A prevalent training paradigm applies Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) followed by Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) to model user preferences. Yet, two core challenges remain: 1) Imbalanced sample hardness, where random negative sampling causes overfitting on easy examples and under-training on hard ones; 2) Cross-modal semantic bias, where the fixed reference model in DPO prevents the policy model from correcting modality misalignments—especially over long sequences. To address these issues, we propose a Multimodal LLM framework that integrates Hardness-aware and Noise-regularized preference optimization for Recommendation (HaNoRec). Specifically, HaNoRec dynamically adjusts optimization weights based on both the estimated hardness of each training sample and the policy model's real-time responsiveness, prioritizing harder examples. It further introduces Gaussian-perturbed distribution optimization on output logits to enhance cross-modal semantic consistency and reduce modality bias inherited from the reference model. Experiments on three benchmarks demonstrate its superiority over state-of-the-art methods.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yongxin Ni | 60 | 75 Efficient and Effective Adaptation of Multimodal Foundation Models in Sequential Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 74 Where to Go Next for Recommender Systems? ID- vs. Modality-based Recommender Models Revisited (2023) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 74 Online Distillation-enhanced Multi-modal Transformer for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
|
| 2 | Jiancan Wu | 56 | 58 AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 58 Towards Robust Alignment of Language Models: Distributionally Robustifying Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 58 Larger or Smaller Reward Margins to Select Preferences for LLM Alignment? (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 3 | Junchen Fu | 55 | 74 Efficient and Effective Adaptation of Multimodal Foundation Models in Sequential Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 74 IISAN: Efficiently Adapting Multimodal Representation for Sequential Recommendation with Decoupled PEFT (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 74 NineRec: A Benchmark Dataset Suite for Evaluating Transferable Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Maolin Wang 0001 | 50 |
Area-chair candidates (5)
| Maolin Wang 0001 assigned | 50 | 15 papers | |
| Weiming Liu 0005 | 48 | 8 papers | |
| Kun Gai | 44 | 5 papers | |
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 43 | 11 papers | |
| Leyu Lin | 43 | 15 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 65 | 3 | 60 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 58 On Softmax Direct Preference Optimization for Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 2 | Yongxin Ni assigned | 60 | 3 | 75 Efficient and Effective Adaptation of Multimodal Foundation Models in Sequential Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 74 Where to Go Next for Recommender Systems? ID- vs. Modality-based Recommender Models Revisited (2023) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
|
| 3 | Jiancan Wu assigned | 56 | 3 | 58 AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 58 Towards Robust Alignment of Language Models: Distributionally Robustifying Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 4 | Junchen Fu assigned | 55 | 3 | 74 Efficient and Effective Adaptation of Multimodal Foundation Models in Sequential Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 74 IISAN: Efficiently Adapting Multimodal Representation for Sequential Recommendation with Decoupled PEFT (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
|
| 5 | Jizhi Zhang | 55 | 3 | 59 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 58 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 6 | Chongming Gao | 55 | 3 | 70 Large Language Models are Learnable Planners for Long-Term Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization 65 DLCRec: A Novel Approach for Managing Diversity in LLM-Based Recommender Systems (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 7 | Bowen Zheng 0005 | 52 | 3 | 58 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 50 Bridging Textual-Collaborative Gap through Semantic Codes for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 8 | Yang Zhang 0072 | 52 | 3 | 58 Reason4Rec: Deliberative User Preference Alignment of Large Language Models for Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization 58 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 10 | Hao Deng 0011 | 49 | 3 | 60 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 51 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 12 | Han Li 0005 | 48 | 3 | 58 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 52 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 13 | Junwei Pan | 48 | 3 | 65 Empowering Large Language Model for Sequential Recommendation via Multimodal Embeddings and Semantic IDs (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 61 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
|
| 14 | Bo Chen 0023 | 47 | 3 | 58 Full-Stack Optimized Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 57 ReLLa: Retrieval-enhanced Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
|
| 15 | Qijiong Liu | 47 | 3 | 73 Multimodal Pretraining, Adaptation, and Generation for Recommendation: A Survey (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 48 Full Retraining, Incremental Fine-tuning, and Hybrid Serving: Model Updating and Serving for Industrial Generative Recommender Systems (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
|
| 16 | Yupeng Hou | 47 | 3 | 51 ActionPiece: Contextually Tokenizing Action Sequences for Generative Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 51 Inductive Generative Recommendation via Retrieval-based Speculation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 17 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 47 | 3 | 57 ROMA: Recommendation-Oriented Language Model Adaptation Using Multi-Modal Multi-Domain Item Sequences (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 51 EAGER: Two-Stream Generative Recommender with Behavior-Semantic Collaboration (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 18 | Jiangxia Cao | 47 | 3 | 73 A Multi-modal Modeling Framework for Cold-start Short-video Recommendation (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 68 QARM: Quantitative Alignment Multi-Modal Recommendation at Kuaishou (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
|
| 19 | Hao Liu 0078 COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 58 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 44 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
|
| 20 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 46 | 3 | 60 MoRE: A Mixture of Reflectors Framework for Large Language Model-Based Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 57 Large Language Models Enhanced Collaborative Filtering (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 21 | Wei Wei 0027 | 46 | 3 | 70 PromptMM: Multi-Modal Knowledge Distillation for Recommendation with Prompt-Tuning (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 69 Multi-Modal Self-Supervised Learning for Recommendation (2023) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning |
|
| 22 | Xuanhua Yang | 46 | 3 | 61 GenRec: A Preference-Oriented Generative Framework for Large-Scale Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 59 Breaking the Relevance-Diversity Seesaw: Hierarchical LLM Reasoning with RL for Industrial Novelty Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
|
| 23 | Yu Zhang 0206 | 46 | 3 | 73 Distribution-Guided Auto-Encoder for User Multimodal Interest Cross Fusion (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 67 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
|
| 24 | Jie Jiang 0015 | 45 | 3 | 78 Empowering Large Language Model for Sequential Recommendation via Multimodal Embeddings and Semantic IDs (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 61 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
|
| 25 | Qiang Luo 0004 | 45 | 3 | 51 OneLoc: Geo-Aware Generative Recommender Systems for Local Life Service (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 48 DiffGRM: Diffusion-based Generative Recommendation Model (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
|
| 26 | Mengyuan Jing | 45 | 3 | 74 Generating Difficulty-aware Negative Samples via Conditional Diffusion for Multi-modal Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 45 Interest-Aware Graph Contrastive Learning for Recommendation With Diffusion-Based Augmentation (2026) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning |
|
| 27 | Junjie Zhang 0009 | 45 | 3 | 51 Generative Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 48 STARec: An Efficient Agent Framework for Recommender Systems via Autonomous Deliberate Reasoning (2025) RL Training of Search Agents |
|
| 28 | Jinxin Hu | 45 | 3 | 60 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 51 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 29 | Lianghao Xia | 44 | 3 | 57 RecLM: Recommendation Instruction Tuning (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 50 RecGPT: A Foundation Model for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
|
| 30 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 44 | 3 | 57 EARN: Efficient Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Generative Recommendation by Register Tokens (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 57 Efficient Inference for Large Language Model-based Generative Recommendation (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
|
| 31 | Lantao Hu | 44 | 3 | 52 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 52 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
|
| 32 | Dan Luo 0004 | 44 | 3 | 73 Scaling Collaborative Filtering with Multimodal Contrastive Fine-tuning (2026) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 62 Generating Negative Samples for Multi-Modal Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |