Bridging Passive and Active: Enhancing Conversation Starter Recommendation via Active Expression Modeling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wu, Yiqing, Li, Haoming, Jiang, Guanyu, Liang, Jiahao, Zhu, Yongchun, Chen, Jingwu, Zhang, Feng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wu, Yiqing
Li, Haoming
Jiang, Guanyu
Liang, Jiahao
Zhu, Yongchun
Chen, Jingwu
Zhang, Feng
author_facet Wu, Yiqing
Li, Haoming
Jiang, Guanyu
Liang, Jiahao
Zhu, Yongchun
Chen, Jingwu
Zhang, Feng
contents Large Language Model (LLM)-driven conversational search is shifting information retrieval from reactive keyword matching to proactive, open-ended dialogues. In this context, Conversation Starters are widely deployed to provide personalized query recommendations that help users initiate dialogues. Conventionally, recommending these starters relies on a closed "exposure-click" loop. Yet, this feedback loop mechanism traps the system in an echo chamber where, compounded by data sparsity, it fails to capture the dynamic nature of conversational search intents shaped by the open world. As a result, the system skews towards popular but generic suggestions.In this work, we uncover an untapped paradigm shift to shatter this harmful feedback loop: harnessing user "free will" through active user expressions. Unlike traditional recommendations, conversational search empowers users to bypass menus entirely through manually typed queries. The open-world intents in active queries hold the key to breaking this loop. However, incorporating them is non-trivial: (1) there exists an inherent distribution shift between active queries and formulated starters. (2) Furthermore, the "non-ID-able" nature of open text renders traditional item-based popularity statistics ineffective for large-scale industrial streaming training. To this end, we propose Passive-Active Bridge (PA-Bridge), a novel framework that employs an adversarial distribution aligner to bridge the distributional gap between passively recommended starters and active expressions. Moreover, we introduce a semantic discretizer to enable the deployment of popularity debiasing algorithms. Online A/B tests on our platform, demonstrate that PA-Bridge significantly boosts the Feature Penetration Rate by 0.54% and User Active Days
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_05855
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridging Passive and Active: Enhancing Conversation Starter Recommendation via Active Expression Modeling
Wu, Yiqing
Li, Haoming
Jiang, Guanyu
Liang, Jiahao
Zhu, Yongchun
Chen, Jingwu
Zhang, Feng
Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
Large Language Model (LLM)-driven conversational search is shifting information retrieval from reactive keyword matching to proactive, open-ended dialogues. In this context, Conversation Starters are widely deployed to provide personalized query recommendations that help users initiate dialogues. Conventionally, recommending these starters relies on a closed "exposure-click" loop. Yet, this feedback loop mechanism traps the system in an echo chamber where, compounded by data sparsity, it fails to capture the dynamic nature of conversational search intents shaped by the open world. As a result, the system skews towards popular but generic suggestions.In this work, we uncover an untapped paradigm shift to shatter this harmful feedback loop: harnessing user "free will" through active user expressions. Unlike traditional recommendations, conversational search empowers users to bypass menus entirely through manually typed queries. The open-world intents in active queries hold the key to breaking this loop. However, incorporating them is non-trivial: (1) there exists an inherent distribution shift between active queries and formulated starters. (2) Furthermore, the "non-ID-able" nature of open text renders traditional item-based popularity statistics ineffective for large-scale industrial streaming training. To this end, we propose Passive-Active Bridge (PA-Bridge), a novel framework that employs an adversarial distribution aligner to bridge the distributional gap between passively recommended starters and active expressions. Moreover, we introduce a semantic discretizer to enable the deployment of popularity debiasing algorithms. Online A/B tests on our platform, demonstrate that PA-Bridge significantly boosts the Feature Penetration Rate by 0.54% and User Active Days
title Bridging Passive and Active: Enhancing Conversation Starter Recommendation via Active Expression Modeling
topic Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05855