GenRecEdit: Adapting Model Editing for Generative Recommendation with Cold-Start Items
Abstract
Generative recommendation (GR) has demonstrated substantial potential for sequential recommendation in an end-to-end generation paradigm. However, existing models suffer from severe cold-start collapse, i.e., recommendation accuracy on cold-start items drops to near zero. Current solutions rely on retraining with cold-start interactions, which faces sparse feedback, high computational cost, and delayed updates, diminishing practical utility in rapidly evolving catalogs in recommendation. Inspired by NLP model editing (enabling training-free knowledge injection into large language models), we explore applying this paradigm to generative recommendation, but face two fundamental challenges: (1)~sequential data in GR lacks explicit subject–object binding (a core NLP sentence structure), hindering targeted model edits; (2)~sequential data in GR has no fixed token co-occurrence patterns (unlike NLP's stable phrases), making multi-token injection unreliable. To address these, we propose GenRecEdit, the first model editing framework tailored for generative recommendation. Specifically, we: (1)~mitigate the absence of sentence structure by explicitly modeling the intrinsic relationship between the entire sequence context and the next-token (e.g., semantic IDs, SIDs) generation; (2)~adopt iterative token-level edits to effectively inject token bundles (e.g., items); and (3)~introduce a One-One trigger mechanism to avoid interactions among multiple token-level edits during inference. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets demonstrate that øurname substantially improves recommendation performance on cold-start items while preserving the model's original recommendation quality. Moreover, øurname achieves these gains with only approximately 9.5% of the training time required by retraining, significantly reducing computational cost and enabling efficient, frequent model updates.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Xuanhua Yang | 52 | 72 GenRec: A Preference-Oriented Generative Framework for Large-Scale Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 63 Towards Personalized Bundle Creative Generation with Contrastive Non-Autoregressive Decoding (2022) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 47 Breaking the Relevance-Diversity Seesaw: Hierarchical LLM Reasoning with RL for Industrial Novelty Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 2 | Ed H. Chi | 50 | 73 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 63 PLUM: Adapting Pre-trained Language Models for Industrial-scale Generative Recommendations (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 58 Fresh Content Needs More Attention: Multi-funnel Fresh Content Recommendation (2023) Content and Attribute-Based Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 3 | Yu Zhang 0206 | 49 | 87 RCLRec: Reverse Curriculum Learning for Modeling Sparse Conversions in Generative Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 57 Distribution-Guided Auto-Encoder for User Multimodal Interest Cross Fusion (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 56 Global-Distribution Aware Scenario-Specific Variational Representation Learning Framework (2025) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Weiming Liu 0005 | 52 |
Area-chair candidates (5)
| Weiming Liu 0005 assigned | 52 | 8 papers | |
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 49 | 11 papers | |
| Leyu Lin | 48 | 15 papers | |
| Kun Gai COI: co-author | 47 | 5 papers | |
| Maolin Wang 0001 | 45 | 15 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Han Li 0005 COI: co-author | 56 | 3 | 74 DualGR: Generative Retrieval with Long and Short-Term Interests Modeling (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 74 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 2 | Hao Deng 0011 | 56 | 3 | 87 RCLRec: Reverse Curriculum Learning for Modeling Sparse Conversions in Generative Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 71 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 3 | Yupeng Hou COI: co-author | 52 | 3 | 89 Inductive Generative Recommendation via Retrieval-based Speculation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 76 Multi-Behavior Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 4 | Xuanhua Yang assigned | 52 | 3 | 72 GenRec: A Preference-Oriented Generative Framework for Large-Scale Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 63 Towards Personalized Bundle Creative Generation with Contrastive Non-Autoregressive Decoding (2022) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 6 | Qijiong Liu | 52 | 3 | 83 Full Retraining, Incremental Fine-tuning, and Hybrid Serving: Model Updating and Serving for Industrial Generative Recommender Systems (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 62 RecBase: Generative Foundation Model Pretraining for Zero-Shot Recommendation (2025) Generative Retrieval and Recommendation Architectures |
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| 7 | Qiang Luo 0004 | 51 | 3 | 66 OneLoc: Geo-Aware Generative Recommender Systems for Local Life Service (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 64 DiffGRM: Diffusion-based Generative Recommendation Model (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 8 | Ed H. Chi assigned | 50 | 3 | 73 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 63 PLUM: Adapting Pre-trained Language Models for Industrial-scale Generative Recommendations (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 9 | Bowen Zheng 0005 | 50 | 3 | 76 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 54 Bridging Textual-Collaborative Gap through Semantic Codes for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 10 | Yong He 0009 | 50 | 3 | 58 Task Similarity Aware Meta Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation (2022) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation 58 An Industrial Framework for Cold-Start Recommendation in Zero-Shot Scenarios (2022) Content and Attribute-Based Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 11 | Yu Zhang 0206 assigned | 49 | 3 | 87 RCLRec: Reverse Curriculum Learning for Modeling Sparse Conversions in Generative Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 57 Distribution-Guided Auto-Encoder for User Multimodal Interest Cross Fusion (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 13 | Yongxin Ni | 49 | 3 | 56 Multi-Modality is All You Need for Transferable Recommender Systems (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 56 Online Distillation-enhanced Multi-modal Transformer for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 14 | Wei Guo 0006 | 49 | 3 | 88 Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Unifying Retrieval and Ranking with a Single Generative Recommendation Model (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 83 Full Retraining, Incremental Fine-tuning, and Hybrid Serving: Model Updating and Serving for Industrial Generative Recommender Systems (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 15 | Jinxin Hu | 49 | 3 | 87 RCLRec: Reverse Curriculum Learning for Modeling Sparse Conversions in Generative Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 71 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 16 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 49 | 3 | 76 EAGER: Two-Stream Generative Recommender with Behavior-Semantic Collaboration (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 55 EAGER-LLM: Enhancing Large Language Models as Recommenders through Exogenous Behavior-Semantic Integration (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 17 | Jiangxia Cao | 49 | 3 | 67 A Multi-modal Modeling Framework for Cold-start Short-video Recommendation (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 51 QARM: Quantitative Alignment Multi-Modal Recommendation at Kuaishou (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 18 | Bo Chen 0023 | 48 | 3 | 88 Generative Representational Learning of Foundation Models for Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 48 Large language models make sample-efficient recommender systems (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 19 | Lantao Hu COI: co-author | 48 | 3 | 73 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 49 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 20 | Jianling Wang | 48 | 3 | 59 Fresh Content Recommendation at Scale: A Multi-funnel Solution and the Potential of LLMs (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 58 Fresh Content Needs More Attention: Multi-funnel Fresh Content Recommendation (2023) Content and Attribute-Based Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 21 | Min Hou 0004 | 48 | 3 | 59 GoRec: A Generative Cold-start Recommendation Framework (2023) Content-Based Transferable Recommendation 56 Multimodality Invariant Learning for Multimedia-Based New Item Recommendation (2024) Content and Attribute-Based Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 22 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 48 | 3 | 71 Efficient Inference for Large Language Model-based Generative Recommendation (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 71 EARN: Efficient Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Generative Recommendation by Register Tokens (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 24 | Lichan Hong | 48 | 3 | 76 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 64 PLUM: Adapting Pre-trained Language Models for Industrial-scale Generative Recommendations (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 26 | Hao Liu 0078 | 47 | 3 | 49 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 46 MCRPL: A Pretrain, Prompt, and Fine-tune Paradigm for Non-overlapping Many-to-one Cross-domain Recommendation (2024) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR |
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| 27 | Huifeng Guo | 47 | 3 | 88 Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Unifying Retrieval and Ranking with a Single Generative Recommendation Model (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 53 AutoAssign: Automatic Shared Embedding Assignment in Streaming Recommendation (2022) Content and Attribute-Based Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 28 | Yang Song 0008 COI: co-author | 47 | 3 | 61 GenSAR: Unifying Balanced Search and Recommendation with Generative Retrieval (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking 48 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval |
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| 29 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 47 | 3 | 53 A Bi-Step Grounding Paradigm for Large Language Models in Recommendation Systems (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 47 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 30 | Junchen Fu | 47 | 3 | 57 Are Multimodal Embeddings Truly Beneficial for Recommendation? A Deep Dive into Whole vs. Individual Modalities (2026) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 55 NineRec: A Benchmark Dataset Suite for Evaluating Transferable Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 31 | Chunyang Wang 0001 | 46 | 3 | 49 A Preference Learning Decoupling Framework for User Cold-Start Recommendation (2023) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation 49 Dual-Adaptive Update Strategies-Enhanced Meta-Optimization for User Cold-Start Recommendation (2025) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 32 | Ke Wang 0038 | 46 | 3 | 49 Multifaceted Relation-aware Meta-learning with Dual Customization for User Cold-start Recommendation (2023) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation 49 A Preference Learning Decoupling Framework for User Cold-Start Recommendation (2023) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 33 | Ke Fei | 46 | 3 | 58 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 |
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| 34 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 46 | 3 | 63 Fading to Grow: Growing Preference Ratios via Preference Fading Discrete Diffusion for Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 52 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |