Generative Prompt Internalization

Haebin Shin, Lei Ji, Yeyun Gong, Sungdong Kim, Eunbi Choi, Minjoon Seo


Abstract
Prompts used in recent large language model based applications are often fixed and lengthy, leading to significant computational overhead. To address this challenge, we propose Generative Prompt Internalization (GenPI), a lightweight method that employs a joint training approach. GenPI not only replicates the behavior of models with prompt inputs but also generates the content of the prompt along with reasons for why the model’s behavior should change accordingly. We demonstrate that our approach effectively internalizes complex prompts across various agent-based application scenarios. For effective training without interactions with the dedicated environments, we introduce a data synthesis technique that autonomously collects conversational datasets by swapping the roles of the agent and environment. This method is especially useful in scenarios where only a predefined prompt is available without a corresponding training dataset. By internalizing complex prompts, Generative Prompt Internalization enables high performance and efficient inference without the need for explicit prompts.
Anthology ID:
2025.naacl-long.376
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
April
Year:
2025
Address:
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Editors:
Luis Chiruzzo, Alan Ritter, Lu Wang
Venue:
NAACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
7338–7363
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing_page/2025.naacl-long.376/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Haebin Shin, Lei Ji, Yeyun Gong, Sungdong Kim, Eunbi Choi, and Minjoon Seo. 2025. Generative Prompt Internalization. In Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 7338–7363, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Generative Prompt Internalization (Shin et al., NAACL 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing_page/2025.naacl-long.376.pdf