Bridging Collaborative Filtering and Large Language Models with Dynamic Alignment, Multimodal Fusion and Evidence-grounded Explanations

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Main Authors: Ma, Bo, Liu, LuYao, Lau, Simon, Yuan, Chandler, Cui, and XueY, Zhang, Rosie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ma, Bo
Liu, LuYao
Lau, Simon
Yuan, Chandler
Cui, and XueY
Zhang, Rosie
author_facet Ma, Bo
Liu, LuYao
Lau, Simon
Yuan, Chandler
Cui, and XueY
Zhang, Rosie
contents Recent research has explored using Large Language Models for recommendation tasks by transforming user interaction histories and item metadata into text prompts, then having the LLM produce rankings or recommendations. A promising approach involves connecting collaborative filtering knowledge to LLM representations through compact adapter networks, which avoids expensive fine-tuning while preserving the strengths of both components. Yet several challenges persist in practice: collaborative filtering models often use static snapshots that miss rapidly changing user preferences; many real-world items contain rich visual and audio content beyond textual descriptions; and current systems struggle to provide trustworthy explanations backed by concrete evidence. Our work introduces \model{}, a framework that tackles these limitations through three key innovations. We develop an online adaptation mechanism that continuously incorporates new user interactions through lightweight modules, avoiding the need to retrain large models. We create a unified representation that seamlessly combines collaborative signals with visual and audio features, handling cases where some modalities may be unavailable. Finally, we design an explanation system that grounds recommendations in specific collaborative patterns and item attributes, producing natural language rationales users can verify. Our approach maintains the efficiency of frozen base models while adding minimal computational overhead, making it practical for real-world deployment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_01606
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridging Collaborative Filtering and Large Language Models with Dynamic Alignment, Multimodal Fusion and Evidence-grounded Explanations
Ma, Bo
Liu, LuYao
Lau, Simon
Yuan, Chandler
Cui, and XueY
Zhang, Rosie
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Recent research has explored using Large Language Models for recommendation tasks by transforming user interaction histories and item metadata into text prompts, then having the LLM produce rankings or recommendations. A promising approach involves connecting collaborative filtering knowledge to LLM representations through compact adapter networks, which avoids expensive fine-tuning while preserving the strengths of both components. Yet several challenges persist in practice: collaborative filtering models often use static snapshots that miss rapidly changing user preferences; many real-world items contain rich visual and audio content beyond textual descriptions; and current systems struggle to provide trustworthy explanations backed by concrete evidence. Our work introduces \model{}, a framework that tackles these limitations through three key innovations. We develop an online adaptation mechanism that continuously incorporates new user interactions through lightweight modules, avoiding the need to retrain large models. We create a unified representation that seamlessly combines collaborative signals with visual and audio features, handling cases where some modalities may be unavailable. Finally, we design an explanation system that grounds recommendations in specific collaborative patterns and item attributes, producing natural language rationales users can verify. Our approach maintains the efficiency of frozen base models while adding minimal computational overhead, making it practical for real-world deployment.
title Bridging Collaborative Filtering and Large Language Models with Dynamic Alignment, Multimodal Fusion and Evidence-grounded Explanations
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01606