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Multimodal Large Language Models with Adaptive Preference Optimization for Sequential Recommendation

sigir26-066 · Full research paper · Yu Wang, Yonghui Yang, Le Wu, Yi Jun Zhang, Fei Liu, Richang Hong
Multimodal Generative Recommendation · 50% Preference Alignment and Optimizatio · 25% Sequential and Session-based Recomme · 25%
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

#ReviewerMatchWhy (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 chairMatch
Maolin Wang 0001 50
Area-chair candidates (5)
Maolin Wang 0001 assigned 5015 papers
Weiming Liu 0005 488 papers
Kun Gai 445 papers
Xiaoyi Zeng 4311 papers
Leyu Lin 4315 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
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