EasyRec: Simple yet Effective Language Models for Recommendation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ren, Xubin, Huang, Chao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Ren, Xubin
Huang, Chao
author_facet Ren, Xubin
Huang, Chao
contents Deep neural networks have emerged as a powerful technique for learning representations from user-item interaction data in collaborative filtering (CF) for recommender systems. However, many existing methods heavily rely on unique user and item IDs, which restricts their performance in zero-shot learning scenarios. Inspired by the success of language models (LMs) and their robust generalization capabilities, we pose the question: How can we leverage language models to enhance recommender systems? We propose EasyRec, an effective approach that integrates text-based semantic understanding with collaborative signals. EasyRec employs a text-behavior alignment framework that combines contrastive learning with collaborative language model tuning. This ensures strong alignment between text-enhanced semantic representations and collaborative behavior information. Extensive evaluations across diverse datasets show EasyRec significantly outperforms state-of-the-art models, particularly in text-based zero-shot recommendation. EasyRec functions as a plug-and-play component that integrates seamlessly into collaborative filtering frameworks. This empowers existing systems with improved performance and adaptability to user preferences. Implementation codes are publicly available at: https://github.com/HKUDS/EasyRec.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_08821
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EasyRec: Simple yet Effective Language Models for Recommendation
Ren, Xubin
Huang, Chao
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Deep neural networks have emerged as a powerful technique for learning representations from user-item interaction data in collaborative filtering (CF) for recommender systems. However, many existing methods heavily rely on unique user and item IDs, which restricts their performance in zero-shot learning scenarios. Inspired by the success of language models (LMs) and their robust generalization capabilities, we pose the question: How can we leverage language models to enhance recommender systems? We propose EasyRec, an effective approach that integrates text-based semantic understanding with collaborative signals. EasyRec employs a text-behavior alignment framework that combines contrastive learning with collaborative language model tuning. This ensures strong alignment between text-enhanced semantic representations and collaborative behavior information. Extensive evaluations across diverse datasets show EasyRec significantly outperforms state-of-the-art models, particularly in text-based zero-shot recommendation. EasyRec functions as a plug-and-play component that integrates seamlessly into collaborative filtering frameworks. This empowers existing systems with improved performance and adaptability to user preferences. Implementation codes are publicly available at: https://github.com/HKUDS/EasyRec.
title EasyRec: Simple yet Effective Language Models for Recommendation
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08821