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Paperium
Paperium

Posted on • Originally published at paperium.net

RL makes MLLMs see better than SFT

How Reinforcement Learning Helps AI See Better Than Traditional Training

Ever wondered why some AI can describe a photo with uncanny detail while others miss the obvious? Scientists discovered that a new training trick called reinforcement learning (RL) makes multimodal AI models “see” images far sharper than the older supervised finetuning (SFT) method.
Think of it like teaching a child to recognize a dog by rewarding every correct guess, rather than just showing a textbook of dog pictures.
This reward‑based learning sharpens the AI’s visual brain, letting it focus on the right parts of a picture—like spotting a tiny bird on a distant branch.
The result? AI that answers visual questions more accurately, even with far less training time.
The researchers turned this insight into a simple recipe named PIVOT, which builds stronger “eyes” for AI without the massive computing costs of traditional methods.
Imagine your phone instantly understanding a scene with the precision of a seasoned photographer.
This breakthrough shows that smarter training, not just bigger models, can bring us closer to truly perceptive machines.
The future of AI vision just got a lot clearer.

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RL makes MLLMs see better than SFT

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