Meta-CoT: Enhancing Granularity and Generalization in Image Editing

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Main Authors: Zhang, Shiyi, Cheng, Yiji, Hang, Tiankai, Yin, Zijin, He, Runze, Xu, Yu, Dai, Wenxun, Lin, Yunlong, Wang, Chunyu, Lu, Qinglin, Tang, Yansong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Shiyi
Cheng, Yiji
Hang, Tiankai
Yin, Zijin
He, Runze
Xu, Yu
Dai, Wenxun
Lin, Yunlong
Wang, Chunyu
Lu, Qinglin
Tang, Yansong
author_facet Zhang, Shiyi
Cheng, Yiji
Hang, Tiankai
Yin, Zijin
He, Runze
Xu, Yu
Dai, Wenxun
Lin, Yunlong
Wang, Chunyu
Lu, Qinglin
Tang, Yansong
contents Unified multi-modal understanding/generative models have shown improved image editing performance by incorporating fine-grained understanding into their Chain-of-Thought (CoT) process. However, a critical question remains underexplored: what forms of CoT and training strategy can jointly enhance both the understanding granularity and generalization? To address this, we propose Meta-CoT, a paradigm that performs a two-level decomposition of any single-image editing operation with two key properties: (1) Decomposability. We observe that any editing intention can be represented as a triplet - (task, target, required understanding ability). Inspired by this, Meta-CoT decomposes both the editing task and the target, generating task-specific CoT and traversing editing operations on all targets. This decomposition enhances the model's understanding granularity of editing operations and guides it to learn each element of the triplet during training, substantially improving the editing capability. (2) Generalizability. In the second decomposition level, we further break down editing tasks into five fundamental meta-tasks. We find that training on these five meta-tasks, together with the other two elements of the triplet, is sufficient to achieve strong generalization across diverse, unseen editing tasks. To further align the model's editing behavior with its CoT reasoning, we introduce the CoT-Editing Consistency Reward, which encourages more accurate and effective utilization of CoT information during editing. Experiments demonstrate that our method achieves an overall 15.8% improvement across 21 editing tasks, and generalizes effectively to unseen editing tasks when trained on only a small set of meta-tasks. Our code, benchmark, and model are released at https://shiyi-zh0408.github.io/projectpages/Meta-CoT/
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24625
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Meta-CoT: Enhancing Granularity and Generalization in Image Editing
Zhang, Shiyi
Cheng, Yiji
Hang, Tiankai
Yin, Zijin
He, Runze
Xu, Yu
Dai, Wenxun
Lin, Yunlong
Wang, Chunyu
Lu, Qinglin
Tang, Yansong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Multimedia
Unified multi-modal understanding/generative models have shown improved image editing performance by incorporating fine-grained understanding into their Chain-of-Thought (CoT) process. However, a critical question remains underexplored: what forms of CoT and training strategy can jointly enhance both the understanding granularity and generalization? To address this, we propose Meta-CoT, a paradigm that performs a two-level decomposition of any single-image editing operation with two key properties: (1) Decomposability. We observe that any editing intention can be represented as a triplet - (task, target, required understanding ability). Inspired by this, Meta-CoT decomposes both the editing task and the target, generating task-specific CoT and traversing editing operations on all targets. This decomposition enhances the model's understanding granularity of editing operations and guides it to learn each element of the triplet during training, substantially improving the editing capability. (2) Generalizability. In the second decomposition level, we further break down editing tasks into five fundamental meta-tasks. We find that training on these five meta-tasks, together with the other two elements of the triplet, is sufficient to achieve strong generalization across diverse, unseen editing tasks. To further align the model's editing behavior with its CoT reasoning, we introduce the CoT-Editing Consistency Reward, which encourages more accurate and effective utilization of CoT information during editing. Experiments demonstrate that our method achieves an overall 15.8% improvement across 21 editing tasks, and generalizes effectively to unseen editing tasks when trained on only a small set of meta-tasks. Our code, benchmark, and model are released at https://shiyi-zh0408.github.io/projectpages/Meta-CoT/
title Meta-CoT: Enhancing Granularity and Generalization in Image Editing
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Multimedia
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24625