Zihao Deng
2026
MMSearch-R1: Incentivizing LMMs to Search
Jinming Wu | Zihao Deng | Wei Li | Yiding Liu | Bo You | Bo Li | Zejun MA | Ziwei Liu
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Jinming Wu | Zihao Deng | Wei Li | Yiding Liu | Bo You | Bo Li | Zejun MA | Ziwei Liu
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Robust deployment of large multimodal models (LMMs) in real-world scenarios requires access to external knowledge sources, given the complexity and dynamic nature of real-world information. Existing approaches such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and prompt engineered search agents rely on rigid pipelines, often leading to inefficient or excessive search behaviors. We present MMSearch-R1, the first end-to-end reinforcement learning framework that enables LMMs to perform on-demand, multi-turn search in real-world Internet environments. Our framework integrates both image and text search tools, allowing the model to reason about when and how to invoke them guided by an outcome-based reward with a search penalty. To support training, We collect a multimodal search VQA dataset through a semi-automated pipeline that covers diverse visual and textual knowledge needs and curate a search-balanced subset with both search-required and search-free samples, which proves essential for shaping efficient and on-demand search behavior. Extensive experiments on knowledge-intensive and info-seeking VQA tasks show that our model not only outperforms traditional RAG-based baselines of the same model size, but also matches the performance of a larger RAG-based model while reducing search calls by over 30%. We further analyze key empirical findings to offer actionable insights for advancing research in multimodal search.
2024
MusiLingo: Bridging Music and Text with Pre-trained Language Models for Music Captioning and Query Response
Zihao Deng | Yinghao Ma | Yudong Liu | Rongchen Guo | Ge Zhang | Wenhu Chen | Wenhao Huang | Emmanouil Benetos
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2024
Zihao Deng | Yinghao Ma | Yudong Liu | Rongchen Guo | Ge Zhang | Wenhu Chen | Wenhao Huang | Emmanouil Benetos
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2024
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown immense potential in multimodal applications, yet the convergence of textual and musical domains remains not well-explored. To address this gap, we present MusiLingo, a novel system for music caption generation and music-related query responses. MusiLingo employs a single projection layer to align music representations from the pre-trained frozen music audio model MERT (CITATION) with a frozen LLM, bridging the gap between music audio and textual contexts. We train it on an extensive music caption dataset and fine-tune it with instructional data. Due to the scarcity of high-quality music Q&A datasets, we created the MusicInstruct (MI) dataset from captions in the MusicCaps datasets, tailored for open-ended music inquiries. Empirical evaluations demonstrate its competitive performance in generating music captions and composing music-related Q&A pairs. Our introduced dataset enables notable advancements beyond previous ones.