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Facial Expression Recognition (FER) is crucial to human-computer interaction. Existing cross-domain FER (CD-FER) methods mainly focus on single-source closed-set scenarios, transferring knowledge from a single source domain to a target domain with identical class sets. However, CD-FER faces two real-world challenges: 1) the need to leverage information from multiple sources, leading to multi-domain shift, and 2) the necessity to recognize unseen target classes, resulting in class shift. These issues give rise to a novel and challenging task, which we define as Multi-domain Open-set FER (MO-FER). In this paper, we propose PromptEmo, a novel CLIP-based framework that leverages bilateral textual prompts to address both shifts in the MO-FER task. Leveraging the generalizability of LLM, PromptEmo constructs trainable positive prompts with LLM-generated emotion descriptions for seen classes, as well as template-derived negative prompts to enhance the reasoning for unseen classes. Then, we introduce a modal-task optimization paradigm organized from two perspectives: textual semantics and visual domains, yielding Intra-modal Space-specific Optimization (ISO) and Cross-modal Emotion-aware Interaction (CEI) strategies. ISO refines the CLIP-based textual space to ensure semantic separation between bilateral prompts and improves the latent visual space by promoting inter-domain alignment. Founded on ISO, CEI facilitates effective vision-language interactions, resulting in four joint loss terms that improve emotion recognition by shaping a domain-invariant, discriminative feature space. PromptEmo surpasses the current SOTA method by 7.7% AUC on unseen classes across four FER datasets, serving as a strong baseline for the MO-FER task.

AAAI 2026

PromptEmo: Learning Emotion with Bilateral Textual Prompts in Multi-Domain Open-set Scenarios

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We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines. AAAI-26 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibit programs, and a range of other activities to be announced.<br><br>

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We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

Color temperature, as a crucial attribute influencing image color, plays a critical role in Image Aesthetics Assessment (IAA). Yet, within the existing IAA field, little light has been shed on assessing the aesthetic quality of image color temperature. To bridge this gap, we introduce a new task: Image Color Temperature Aesthetics Assessment (ICTAA). However, this task poses the following challenge: 1) Perceptual Sensitivity: humans exhibit high sensitivity to subtle shifts in color temperature, necessitating a model to enable fine-grained discrimination; 2) Spectral Continuity: The theoretical modeling of color temperature aesthetics requires continuous labels; however, the just-noticeable-difference property of human perception makes continuous labeling infeasible, necessitating a well-designed labeling strategy. 3) Label One-Sidedness: Color temperature annotations exhibit a certain degree of ambiguity and randomness; directly converting annotation results into hard labels discards the potential preference confidence of annotators. To address the aforementioned challenge, we make the following efforts. First, we propose a multi-modal contrastive learning framework, named ICTA2Net, that models color temperature differences between image pairs while strictly controlling other visual attributes. Second, leveraging weak supervision and color temperature transitivity, we discretely sample images based on an anchor image and human perceptibility to establish contrastive relations across different color temperatures. Third, we introduce an Information Entropy-weighted Accuracy (IEA) evaluation metric to better reflect the consistency between model predictions and human preference distributions. Finally, we construct a large-scale color temperature aesthetics dataset (ICTAA240K) and a comprehensive benchmark for validation. Experiments show our method outperforms existing IAA methods on this dataset, thereby setting an effective roadmap for ICTAA.

Thinking Aesthetics Assessment of Image Color Temperature: Models, Datasets and Benchmarks

Cross-Domain Decentralized Graph Learning (CD-DGL) is a promising paradigm that enables efficient, privacy-preserving collaboration among multiple parties to unlock the value of cross-domain graph data. However, it faces two fundamental challenges. First, a critical challenge arises from the severe bias in cross-domain data, leading local models to extract deviated domain knowledge. Second, the existing domain topology shift and heterogeneous model architectures make direct model aggregation infeasible.
To address these issues, we pioneer the use of Extended Persistent Homology (EPH) to reveal and quantify the problem of domain topology shift induced by the cross-domain setting. Building on this insight, we present Decentralized Graph learning with Topology-aware knowledge Fusion (DGTF), a novel framework designed to facilitate positive topological knowledge transfer in CD-DGL. Our framework achieves this by integrating two core strategies: first, a contrastive learning-based approach to extract task-agnostic topological knowledge, and second, a topology-aware, model-independent knowledge fusion method to effectively integrate this topological information. Extensive experiments conducted under various cross-domain and model-heterogeneous settings validate the superiority and effectiveness of our proposed framework.

DGTF: Cross-Domain Decentralized Graph Learning with Topology-Aware Knowledge Fusion

Incorporating explicit reasoning rules within the latent space of language models (LMs) offers a promising pathway to enhance generalisation, interpretability, and controllability. While current Transformer-based language models have shown strong performance on Natural Language Inference (NLI) tasks, they often rely on memorisation rather than explicit rule-based generalisation. This work investigates how human-interpretable reasoning rules can be explicitly encoded within
LMs with the support of Language Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), as a mechanism for generative control. We propose a complete pipeline for learning reasoning rules within Transformer-based language VAEs. This pipeline encompasses three rule-based reasoning tasks, a supporting theoretical framework, and a practical end-to-end architecture. The experiment illustrates the following findings: Disentangled reasoning: Under explicit signal supervision, reasoning rules (viewed as functional mappings) can be disentangled within the encoder’s parametric space. This separation results in distinct clustering of rules in the output feature space. Prior knowledge injection: injecting rule-based constraints into the Query enables the model to more effectively retrieve the stored Value from memory based on Key. This approach offers a simple method for integrating prior knowledge into decoder-only language models. Moreover, we found that FFN layers are better than attention layers at preserving the separation of reasoning rules in the model's parameters.

Learning to Disentangle Latent Reasoning Rules with Language VAEs: A Systematic Study

Visual grounding, the task of linking textual queries to specific regions within images, plays a pivotal role in vision-language integration. Existing methods typically rely on extensive task-specific annotations and fine-tuning, limiting their ability to generalize effectively to novel or out-of-distribution scenarios. To address these limitations, we introduce GroundingAgent, a novel agentic visual grounding framework that operates without any task-specific fine-tuning. GroundingAgent employs a structured, iterative reasoning mechanism that integrates pretrained open-vocabulary object detectors, multimodal large language models (MLLMs), and large language models (LLMs) to progressively refine candidate regions through joint semantic and spatial analyses. Remarkably, GroundingAgent achieves an average zero-shot grounding accuracy of 65.1% on widely-used benchmarks (RefCOCO, RefCOCO+, RefCOCOg), entirely without fine-tuning. Furthermore, by substituting MLLM-generated captions with the original query texts, the accuracy at the selection stage alone reaches approximately 90%, closely matching supervised performance and underscoring the critical role of LLM reasoning capabilities. GroundingAgent also offers strong interpretability, transparently illustrating each reasoning step, thus providing clear insights into its decision-making process.

Connecting the Dots: Training-Free Visual Grounding via Agentic Reasoning

Recently, multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have achieved significant advancements across various domains, and corresponding evaluation benchmarks have been continuously refined and improved. In this process, benchmarks in the scientific domain have played an important role in assessing the reasoning capabilities of MLLMs. However, existing benchmarks still face three key challenges: \textbf{1)} Insufficient evaluation of models' reasoning abilities in multilingual scenarios; \textbf{2)} Inadequate assessment of MLLMs' comprehensive modality coverage; \textbf{3)} Lack of fine-grained annotation of scientific knowledge points. To address these gaps, we propose MME-SCI, a comprehensive and challenging benchmark. We carefully collected 1,019 high-quality question-answer pairs, which involve 3 distinct evaluation modes. These pairs cover four subjects, namely mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, and support five languages: Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Japanese. We conducted extensive experiments on 16 open-source models and 4 closed-source models, and the results demonstrate that MME-SCI is widely challenging for existing MLLMs. For instance, under the Image-only evaluation mode, o4-mini achieved accuracy of only 52.11\%, 24.73\%, 36.57\%, and 29.80\% in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, respectively, indicating a significantly higher difficulty level compared to existing benchmarks. More importantly, using MME-SCI's multilingual and fine-grained knowledge attributes, we analyzed existing models' performance in depth and identified their weaknesses in specific domains. For example, in questions related to ``Magnetic Field'', o4-mini correctly answered only 5 out of 33 questions, thereby fine-grainedly exposing the model's vulnerabilities. These findings highlight the urgent need to enhance the scientific reasoning capabilities of MLLMs. Code and samples are available in the Supplementary Materials.

MME-SCI: A Comprehensive and Challenging Science Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models

Multimedia content offers additional context for recommender systems to better understand user interests. Existing studies on multimodal recommendation primarily focus on constructing item-item semantic graphs. However, most of these methods capture only shallow semantic structures based on feature similarity and struggle to model more complex or cross-entity semantic relationships (e.g., user-item). Moreover, in these methods, collaborative signals often dominate and suppress semantic knowledge, which limits its role in representation learning. To address these issues, we propose SCALE, a novel framework that combines $\underline{S}$ubspace-aware graph $\underline{C}$onstruction and contrastive $\underline{A}$lignment for multimoda$\underline{L}$ recommendation with large languag$\underline{E}$ models. Specifically, we first use large language models and encoders to extract user and item features. Following the subspace clustering assumption, we apply the Orthogonal Matching Pursuit algorithm to mine complex semantic structures within the item-item, user-user, and user-item spaces, and integrate them into a unified semantic graph. We then perform graph convolution on both the semantic and interaction graphs, and aggregate the results for recommendation. Furthermore, contrastive losses are employed to enhance semantic fusion and alignment. Extensive experiments on five real-world datasets demonstrate that SCALE significantly outperforms state-of-the-art multimodal recommendation models, highlighting its effectiveness in modeling complex relationships and integrating semantic knowledge with collaborative signals. The source code is provided in the supplementary material.

Subspace-Aware Graph Construction and Contrastive Alignment for Multimodal Recommendation with Large Language Models

The deployment of pre-trained perception models in novel environments often leads to performance degradation due to distributional shifts. Although recent artificial intelligence approaches for metacognition use logical rules to characterize and filter model errors, improving precision often comes at the cost of reduced recall. This paper addresses the hypothesis that leveraging multiple pre-trained models can mitigate this recall reduction. We formulate the challenge of identifying and managing conflicting predictions from various models as a consistency-based abduction problem, building on the idea of abductive learning (ABL) but applying it to test-time instead of training. The input predictions and the learned error detection rules derived from each model are encoded in a logic program. We then seek an abductive explanation—a subset of model predictions—that maximizes prediction coverage while ensuring the rate of logical inconsistencies (derived from domain constraints) remains below a specified threshold. We propose two algorithms for this knowledge representation task: an exact method based on Integer Programming (IP) and an efficient Heuristic Search (HS). Through extensive experiments on a simulated aerial imagery dataset featuring controlled, complex distributional shifts, we demonstrate that our abduction-based framework outperforms individual models and standard ensemble baselines, achieving, for instance, average relative improvements of approximately 13.6% in F1-score and 16.6% in accuracy across 15 diverse test datasets when compared to the best individual model. Our results validate the use of consistency-based abduction as an effective mechanism to robustly integrate knowledge from multiple imperfect models in challenging, novel scenarios.

Consistency-based Abductive Reasoning over Perceptual Errors of Multiple Pre-trained Models in Novel Environments

Reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved promising results in continuous control tasks, where efficient exploration of the state space is crucial for success. However, many recent RL approaches still struggle with sample inefficiency and insufficient exploration for long-horizon tasks, particularly in environments characterized by high-dimensional and complex state spaces.
To address these challenges, we propose a novel exploration framework, Latent State Predictive Exploration (LSPE). The core idea behind LSPE is to endow the agent with a form of ``foresight" to enhance exploration in long-horizon settings. Specifically, LSPE employs a state encoder to learn compact latent representations from high-dimensional visual observations, effectively filtering out irrelevant or noisy information. To further enrich and stabilize these representations, we incorporate a diffusion-based self-predictive module that enforces temporal consistency by predicting future states, thereby improving both exploration and downstream predictive control.
Additionally, we introduce an Exploration Reward Function (ERF) that explicitly encourages the agent to visit novel latent states. This reward signal promotes more efficient and scalable exploration in complex environments.
We evaluate LSPE across a diverse set of challenging long-horizon navigation and manipulation tasks, spanning simulation environments such as Habitat and Robosuite, as well as deployment on a real robot in a **physical indoor environment**. Experimental results show that LSPE substantially enhances exploration efficiency and scales effectively to complex, high-dimensional tasks.

Latent State-Predictive Exploration for Deep Reinforcement Learning

The Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM2) has established a new benchmark for high-precision image and video segmentation, offering significant potential for a wide range of computer vision tasks. Despite its impressive performance, the model's substantial computational and memory requirements present a significant obstacle to its practical deployment on resource-constrained devices. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for optimizing SAM2 through two synergistic, importance-driven strategies: quantization and memory management. Specifically, an Importance-driven Mixed-Precision Quantization scheme, which analyzes the sensitivity of each layer using a Weight-Activation Importance Score, is employed to enable a targeted bit-width assignment, preserving model accuracy by keeping critical layers at higher precision. Then, the Selective Importance-driven Synthesis (SIS) mechanism is proposed to address the inefficient accumulation of redundant data in the memory bank. SIS intelligently compresses the memory by identifying the most contextually similar historical frames and synthesizing them into a single, representative feature, thereby preserving informational diversity while enhancing temporal context understanding. Extensive experiments on the COCO and SA-V benchmarks validate our approach, showing that our optimized model consistently outperforms state-of-the-art quantization methods. Our work provides a principled framework for the co-design of quantization and dynamic memory management, offering a practical path toward deploying powerful video segmentation models in real-world applications.

Mix-QSAM2: Mixed-Precision Quantization for High Fidelity Segmentation in Resource Constrained Scenarios

Semantic segmentation is a fundamental task in computer vision with wide-ranging applications, including autonomous driving and robotics. While RGB-based methods have achieved strong performance with CNNs and Transformers, their effectiveness degrades under fast motion, low-light, or high dynamic range conditions due to limitations of frame cameras. Event cameras offer complementary advantages such as high temporal resolution and low latency, yet lack color and texture, making them insufficient on their own. To address this, recent research has explored multimodal fusion of RGB and event data; however, many existing approaches are computationally expensive and focus primarily on spatial fusion, neglecting the temporal dynamics inherent in event streams. In this work, we propose MambaSeg, a novel dual-branch semantic segmentation framework that employs parallel Mamba encoders to efficiently model RGB images and event streams. To reduce cross-modal ambiguity, we introduce the Dual-Dimensional Interaction Module (DDIM), comprising a Cross-Spatial Interaction Module (CSIM) and a Cross-Temporal Interaction Module (CTIM), which jointly perform fine-grained fusion along both spatial and temporal dimensions. This design improves cross-modal alignment, reduces ambiguity, and leverages the complementary properties of each modality. Extensive experiments on the DDD17 and DSEC datasets demonstrate that MambaSeg achieves state-of-the-art segmentation performance while significantly reducing computational cost, showcasing its promise for efficient, scalable, and robust multimodal perception.

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