Thinking with Generated Images

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Chern, Ethan, Hu, Zhulin, Chern, Steffi, Kou, Siqi, Su, Jiadi, Ma, Yan, Deng, Zhijie, Liu, Pengfei
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Chern, Ethan
Hu, Zhulin
Chern, Steffi
Kou, Siqi
Su, Jiadi
Ma, Yan
Deng, Zhijie
Liu, Pengfei
author_facet Chern, Ethan
Hu, Zhulin
Chern, Steffi
Kou, Siqi
Su, Jiadi
Ma, Yan
Deng, Zhijie
Liu, Pengfei
contents We present Thinking with Generated Images, a novel paradigm that fundamentally transforms how large multimodal models (LMMs) engage with visual reasoning by enabling them to natively think across text and vision modalities through spontaneous generation of intermediate visual thinking steps. Current visual reasoning with LMMs is constrained to either processing fixed user-provided images or reasoning solely through text-based chain-of-thought (CoT). Thinking with Generated Images unlocks a new dimension of cognitive capability where models can actively construct intermediate visual thoughts, critique their own visual hypotheses, and refine them as integral components of their reasoning process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through two complementary mechanisms: (1) vision generation with intermediate visual subgoals, where models decompose complex visual tasks into manageable components that are generated and integrated progressively, and (2) vision generation with self-critique, where models generate an initial visual hypothesis, analyze its shortcomings through textual reasoning, and produce refined outputs based on their own critiques. Our experiments on vision generation benchmarks show substantial improvements over baseline approaches, with our models achieving up to 50% (from 38% to 57%) relative improvement in handling complex multi-object scenarios. From biochemists exploring novel protein structures, and architects iterating on spatial designs, to forensic analysts reconstructing crime scenes, and basketball players envisioning strategic plays, our approach enables AI models to engage in the kind of visual imagination and iterative refinement that characterizes human creative, analytical, and strategic thinking. We release our open-source suite at https://github.com/GAIR-NLP/thinking-with-generated-images.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_22525
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Thinking with Generated Images
Chern, Ethan
Hu, Zhulin
Chern, Steffi
Kou, Siqi
Su, Jiadi
Ma, Yan
Deng, Zhijie
Liu, Pengfei
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
We present Thinking with Generated Images, a novel paradigm that fundamentally transforms how large multimodal models (LMMs) engage with visual reasoning by enabling them to natively think across text and vision modalities through spontaneous generation of intermediate visual thinking steps. Current visual reasoning with LMMs is constrained to either processing fixed user-provided images or reasoning solely through text-based chain-of-thought (CoT). Thinking with Generated Images unlocks a new dimension of cognitive capability where models can actively construct intermediate visual thoughts, critique their own visual hypotheses, and refine them as integral components of their reasoning process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through two complementary mechanisms: (1) vision generation with intermediate visual subgoals, where models decompose complex visual tasks into manageable components that are generated and integrated progressively, and (2) vision generation with self-critique, where models generate an initial visual hypothesis, analyze its shortcomings through textual reasoning, and produce refined outputs based on their own critiques. Our experiments on vision generation benchmarks show substantial improvements over baseline approaches, with our models achieving up to 50% (from 38% to 57%) relative improvement in handling complex multi-object scenarios. From biochemists exploring novel protein structures, and architects iterating on spatial designs, to forensic analysts reconstructing crime scenes, and basketball players envisioning strategic plays, our approach enables AI models to engage in the kind of visual imagination and iterative refinement that characterizes human creative, analytical, and strategic thinking. We release our open-source suite at https://github.com/GAIR-NLP/thinking-with-generated-images.
title Thinking with Generated Images
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22525