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Bi-Level Optimization for Generative Recommendation: Bridging Tokenization and Generation

sigir26-108 · Full research paper · Yimeng Bai, Chang Liu, Yang Zhang, Dingxian Wang, Frank Yang, Andrew Rabinovich, Wenge Rong, Fuli Feng
Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs · 50% Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs · 25% Generative Retrieval and Recommendat · 25%
Abstract

Generative recommendation is emerging as a transformative paradigm by directly generating recommended items, rather than relying on matching. Building such a system typically involves two key components: (1) optimizing the tokenizer to derive suitable item identifiers, and (2) training the recommender based on those identifiers. Existing approaches often treat these components separately—either sequentially or in alternation—overlooking their interdependence. This separation can lead to misalignment: the tokenizer is trained without direct guidance from the recommendation objective, potentially yielding suboptimal identifiers that degrade recommendation performance. To address this, we propose BLOGER, a Bi-Level Optimization for GEnerative Recommendation framework, which explicitly models the interdependence between the tokenizer and the recommender in a unified optimization process. The lower level trains the recommender using tokenized sequences, while the upper level optimizes the tokenizer based on both the tokenization loss and recommendation loss. We adopt a meta-learning approach to solve this bi-level optimization efficiently, and introduce gradient surgery to mitigate gradient conflicts in the upper-level updates, thereby ensuring that item identifiers are both informative and recommendation-aligned. Extensive experiments on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that BLOGER consistently outperforms state-of-the-art generative recommendation methods while maintaining practical efficiency with no significant additional computational overhead, effectively bridging the gap between item tokenization and autoregressive generation. We release our code at https://github.com/Ten-Mao/BLOGER.

Assigned reviewers

#ReviewerMatchWhy (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy)
1 Hao Deng 0011
61
77 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
76 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
62 RCLRec: Reverse Curriculum Learning for Modeling Sparse Conversions in Generative Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
2 Yupeng Hou
61
89 Generating Long Semantic IDs in Parallel for Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
88 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
87 Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
3 Qijiong Liu
57
88 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
88 Learning Multi-aspect Item Palette: A Semantic Tokenization Framework for Generative Recommendation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
63 Full Retraining, Incremental Fine-tuning, and Hybrid Serving: Model Updating and Serving for Industrial Generative Recommender Systems (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking

Area chair

Area chairMatch
Xiaoyi Zeng 53
Area-chair candidates (5)
Xiaoyi Zeng assigned 5311 papers
Kun Gai 475 papers
Maolin Wang 0001 4515 papers
Leyu Lin 4515 papers
Weiming Liu 0005 COI: co-author 458 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
1 Hao Deng 0011 assigned 61 3
77 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
76 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
2 Yupeng Hou assigned 61 3
89 Generating Long Semantic IDs in Parallel for Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
88 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
3 Jieming Zhu 59 3
88 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
88 Learning Multi-aspect Item Palette: A Semantic Tokenization Framework for Generative Recommendation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
4 Qijiong Liu assigned 57 3
88 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
88 Learning Multi-aspect Item Palette: A Semantic Tokenization Framework for Generative Recommendation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
5 Bowen Zheng 0005 56 3
89 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
86 Bridging Textual-Collaborative Gap through Semantic Codes for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
6 Qiang Luo 0004 54 3
88 DiffGRM: Diffusion-based Generative Recommendation Model (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
69 OneLoc: Geo-Aware Generative Recommender Systems for Local Life Service (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
8 Jinxin Hu 52 3
86 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
77 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
9 Lichan Hong 51 3
89 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
88 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
10 Ed H. Chi 51 3
88 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
74 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
11 Han Li 0005 50 3
74 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
59 OneSug: The Unified End-to-End Generative Framework for E-commerce Query Suggestion (2026) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
12 Lantao Hu 49 3
74 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
68 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
13 Xuanhua Yang 49 3
64 Towards Personalized Bundle Creative Generation with Contrastive Non-Autoregressive Decoding (2022) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
58 GenRec: A Preference-Oriented Generative Framework for Large-Scale Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
14 Junwei Pan COI: co-author 48 3
73 Incremental Learning for LLM-based Tokenization and Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
63 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
15 Yu Zhang 0206 48 3
70 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
64 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
16 Yongxin Ni 47 3
53 Multi-Modality is All You Need for Transferable Recommender Systems (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation
52 Where to Go Next for Recommender Systems? ID- vs. Modality-based Recommender Models Revisited (2023) Multimodal Generative Recommendation
17 Jiangxia Cao 47 3
53 A Multi-modal Modeling Framework for Cold-start Short-video Recommendation (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation
52 QARM: Quantitative Alignment Multi-Modal Recommendation at Kuaishou (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation
18 Bo Chen 0023 47 3
66 Generative Representational Learning of Foundation Models for Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
47 Full-Stack Optimized Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
19 Zhengyi Yang 0007 COI: co-author 47 3
55 A Bi-Step Grounding Paradigm for Large Language Models in Recommendation Systems (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
51 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
21 Shuchang Liu 0001 46 3
75 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
64 Fading to Grow: Growing Preference Ratios via Preference Fading Discrete Diffusion for Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
22 Jiancan Wu COI: co-author 46 3
88 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
47 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
23 Wei Guo 0006 46 3
64 Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Unifying Retrieval and Ranking with a Single Generative Recommendation Model (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
63 Full Retraining, Incremental Fine-tuning, and Hybrid Serving: Model Updating and Serving for Industrial Generative Recommender Systems (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
24 Ke Fei 46 3
61 Sharpness-Consistent Cross-Domain Recommendation for Cold-Start Items (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
41 Stable and Adaptive Fusion for Multi-domain Multi-task Recommendation (2026) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction
25 Hao Liu 0078 46 3
47 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation
47 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment
26 Jizhi Zhang COI: co-author 46 3
75 Learnable Item Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
55 Decoding Matters: Addressing Amplification Bias and Homogeneity Issue in Recommendations for Large Language Models (2024) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
27 Julian J. McAuley COI: co-author 46 3
75 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
73 Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
28 Jie Jiang 0015 COI: co-author 46 3
73 Incremental Learning for LLM-based Tokenization and Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
63 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
30 Ke Wang 0038 45 3
49 LLM-Grounded Diffusion for Cross-Domain Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
48 Multifaceted Relation-aware Meta-learning with Dual Customization for User Cold-start Recommendation (2023) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation
33 Yong He 0009 45 3
48 Task Similarity Aware Meta Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation (2022) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation
48 An Industrial Framework for Cold-Start Recommendation in Zero-Shot Scenarios (2022) Content and Attribute-Based Cold-Start Recommendation
34 Yongqi Li 0001 COI: co-author 45 3
82 Learnable Item Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
70 Bridging Items and Language: A Transition Paradigm for Large Language Model-Based Recommendation (2024) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
35 Lianghao Xia 45 3
76 RecGPT: A Foundation Model for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
45 Automated Self-Supervised Learning for Recommendation (2023) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning