Large language models (LLMs) have achieved significant advancements in reasoning capabilities through reinforcement learning (RL) via environmental exploration. As the intrinsic properties of the environment determine the abilities that LLMs can learn, the environment plays a important role in the RL finetuning process. An ideal LLM reasoning environment should possess three core characteristics: scalability, generalizable reasoning, and verifiability. However, existing mathematical and coding environments are difficult to scale due to heavy reliance on expert annotation, while the skills learned in game-based environments are too specialized to generalize. To bridge this gap, we introduce the Structured In-context Environment (SIE) framework. SIE achieves scalability by automatically constructing reasoning environments from large-scale structured data, where the rich compositional patterns naturally support generalizable reasoning. Moreover, the explicit schemas and reasoning chains in structured data provide a foundation for rule-based verifiability. Experimental results show that SIE framework not only achieves substantial improvements in in-domain structured reasoning, but also enables the learned compositional reasoning skills to generalize effectively to out-of-domain mathematical and logical reasoning tasks. We further explored learning in information-limited partial SIEs and found that LLMs can infer the missing information through exploring the environment, leading to robust reasoning improvements and generalization performance. Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a dominant post-training paradigm for eliciting complex reasoning capabilities (Jaech et al., 2024; Guo et al., 2025; Team et al., 2025; Comanici et al., 2025). This mechanism of learning from environmental feedback enables LLMs to acquire crucial reasoning strategies such as self-reflection, backtracking, and chain-of-thought. RL fine-tuning has shown significant progress in math reasoning and code generation (Zeng et al., 2025; Hu et al., 2025b; Chen et al., 2025), and is gradually being extended to more challenging applications, such as interacting with search engines and building deep research agents (Jin et al., 2025; Zheng et al., 2025b; Li et al., 2025; Team, 2025).

Code switching, particularly between Korean and English, has become a defining feature of modern K-pop, reflecting both aesthetic choices and global market strategies. This paper is a primary investigation into the linguistic strategies employed in K-pop songs that achieve global chart success, with a focus on the role of code-switching and English lyric usage. A dataset of K-pop songs that appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 and Global 200 charts from 2017 to 2025, spanning 14 groups and 8 solo artists, was compiled. Using this dataset, the proportion of English and Korean lyrics, the frequency of code-switching, and other stylistic features were analysed. It was found that English dominates the linguistic landscape of globally charting K-pop songs, with both male and female performers exhibiting high degrees of code-switching and English usage. Statistical tests indicated no significant gender-based differences, although female solo artists tend to favour English more consistently. A classification task was also performed to predict performer gender from lyrics, achieving macro F1 scores up to 0.76 using multilingual embeddings and handcrafted features. Finally, differences between songs charting on the Hot 100 versus the Global 200 were examined, suggesting that, while there is no significant gender difference in English, higher English usage may be more critical for success in the US-focused Hot 100. The findings highlight how linguistic choices in K-pop lyrics are shaped by global market pressures and reveal stylistic patterns that reflect performer identity and chart context.

Agentic AI represents a paradigm shift in enhancing the capabilities of generative AI models. While these systems demonstrate immense potential and power, current evaluation techniques primarily focus on assessing their efficacy in identifying appropriate agents, tools, and parameters. However, a critical gap exists in evaluating the alignment between an Agentic AI system's tasks and its overarching goals. This paper introduces the Creative Adversarial Testing (CAT) framework, a novel approach designed to capture and analyze the complex relationship between Agentic AI tasks and the system's intended objectives. We validate the CAT framework through extensive simulation using synthetic interaction data modeled after Alexa+ audio services, a sophisticated Agentic AI system that shapes the user experience for millions of users globally. This synthetic data approach enables comprehensive testing of edge cases and failure modes while protecting user privacy. Our results demonstrate that the CAT framework provides unprecedented insights into goal-task alignment, enabling more effective optimization and development of Agentic AI systems.

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong persuasive capabilities comparable to those of humans, offering promising benefits while raising societal concerns about their deployment. However, systematically evaluating the persuasive capabilities of LLMs is inherently challenging, as the effectiveness of persuasion among humans varies significantly across different domains. In this paper, we take a theory-driven approach to provide a scalable and principled framework for measuring the persuasive capabilities of LLMs. Grounded in the Bayesian Persuasion (BP) framework, we repurpose existing human-human persuasion datasets to construct environments for evaluating and training LLMs in strategic persuasion. Our results reveal that frontier models can consistently achieve high persuasion gains and exhibit sophisticated persuasion strategies that align with theoretical predictions. Building on this, we use reinforcement learning to train LLMs for strategic persuasion in our environments. Our results also demonstrate that even small LLMs can obtain significantly higher persuasion gains through reinforcement learning.

One-step generators distilled from Masked Diffusion Models (MDMs) compress multiple sampling steps into a single forward pass, enabling efficient text and image synthesis. However, they suffer two key limitations: they inherit modeling bias from the teacher, and their discrete token outputs block gradient flow, preventing post-distillation refinements such as adversarial training, reward-based fine-tuning, and Test-Time Embedding Optimization (TTEO). In this work, we introduce soft embeddings, a simple relaxation that replaces discrete tokens with the expected embeddings under the generator's output distribution. Soft embeddings preserve representation fidelity for one-step discrete generator while providing a fully differentiable continuous surrogate that is compatible with teacher backbones and tokenizer decoders. Integrating soft embeddings into the Di[M]O distillation framework (denoted Soft-Di[M]O) makes one-step generators end-to-end trainable and enables straightforward application of GAN-based refinement, differentiable reward fine-tuning, and TTEO. Empirically, across multiple MDM teachers (e.g., MaskBit, MaskGen), Soft-Di[M]O achieves state-of-the-art one-step results: improved class-to-image performance, a one-step FID of 1.56 on ImageNet-256 with GAN-based refinement, along with higher GenEval and HPS scores on text-to-image with reward fine-tuning, and further gains from TTEO.

Recently, knowledge-grounded conversations in the open domain gain great attention from researchers. Existing works on retrieval-based dialogue systems have paid tremendous efforts to utilize neural networks to build a matching model, where all of the context and knowledge contents are used to match the response candidate with various representation methods. Actually, different parts of the context and knowledge are differentially important for recognizing the proper response candidate, as many utterances are useless due to the topic shift. Those excessive useless information in the context and knowledge can influence the matching process and leads to inferior performance. To address this problem, we propose a multi-turn \textbf{R}esponse \textbf{S}election \textbf{M}odel that can \textbf{D}etect the relevant parts of the \textbf{C}ontext and \textbf{K}nowledge collection (\textbf{RSM-DCK}). Our model first uses the recent context as a query to pre-select relevant parts of the context and knowledge collection at the word-level and utterance-level semantics. Further, the response candidate interacts with the selected context and knowledge collection respectively. In the end, The fused representation of the context and response candidate is utilized to post-select the relevant parts of the knowledge collection more confidently for matching. We test our proposed model on two benchmark datasets. Evaluation results indicate that our model achieves better performance than the existing methods, and can effectively detect the relevant context and knowledge for response selection.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed across diverse domains but often exhibit disparities in how they handle real-life queries. To systematically investigate these effects within various disability contexts, we introduce \textbf{AccessEval (Accessibility Evaluation)}, a benchmark evaluating 21 closed- and open-source LLMs across 6 real-world domains and 9 disability types using paired Neutral and Disability-Aware Queries. We evaluated model outputs with metrics for sentiment, social perception, and factual accuracy. Our analysis reveals that responses to disability-aware queries tend to have a more negative tone, increased stereotyping, and higher factual error compared to neutral queries. These effects show notable variation by domain and disability type, with disabilities affecting hearing, speech, and mobility disproportionately impacted. These disparities reflect persistent forms of ableism embedded in model behavior. By examining model performance in real-world decision-making contexts, we better illuminate how such biases can translate into tangible harms for disabled users. This framing helps bridges the gap between technical evaluation and user impact, reinforcing importance of bias mitigation in day-to-day applications. Our dataset is publicly available at: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Srikant86/AccessEval

In recent years, the guitar has received increased attention from the music information retrieval (MIR) community driven by the challenges posed by its diverse playing techniques and sonic characteristics. Mainly fueled by deep learning approaches, progress has been limited by the scarcity and limited annotations of datasets. To address this, we present the Guitar On Audio and Tablatures (GOAT) dataset, comprising 5.9 hours of unique high-quality direct input audio recordings of electric guitars from a variety of different guitars and players. We also present an effective data augmentation strategy using guitar amplifiers which delivers near-unlimited tonal variety, of which we provide a starting 29.5 hours of audio. Each recording is annotated using guitar tablatures, a guitar-specific symbolic format supporting string and fret numbers, as well as numerous playing techniques. For this we utilise both the Guitar Pro format, a software for tablature playback and editing, and a text-like token encoding. Furthermore, we present competitive results using GOAT for MIDI transcription and preliminary results for a novel approach to automatic guitar tablature transcription. We hope that GOAT opens up the possibilities to train novel models on a wide variety of guitar-related MIR tasks, from synthesis to transcription to playing technique detection.

Creators struggle to edit long-form, narrative-rich videos not because of UI complexity, but due to the cognitive demands of searching, storyboarding, and sequencing hours of footage. Existing transcript- or embedding-based methods fall short for creative workflows, as models struggle to track characters, infer motivations, and connect dispersed events. We present a prompt-driven, modular editing system that helps creators restructure multi-hour content through free-form prompts rather than timelines. At its core is a semantic indexing pipeline that builds a global narrative via temporal segmentation, guided memory compression, and cross-granularity fusion, producing interpretable traces of plot, dialogue, emotion, and context. Users receive cinematic edits while optionally refining transparent intermediate outputs. Evaluated on 400+ videos with expert ratings, QA, and preference studies, our system scales prompt-driven editing, preserves narrative coherence, and balances automation with creator control.

Visually-guided image editing, where edits are conditioned on both visual cues and textual prompts, has emerged as a powerful paradigm for fine-grained, controllable content generation. Although recent generative models have shown remarkable capabilities, existing evaluations remain simple and insufficiently representative of real-world editing challenges. We present SpotEdit, a comprehensive benchmark designed to systematically assess visually-guided image editing methods across diverse diffusion, autoregressive, and hybrid generative models, uncovering substantial performance disparities. To address a critical yet underexplored challenge, our benchmark includes a dedicated component on hallucination, highlighting how leading models, such as GPT -4o, often hallucinate the existence of a visual cue and erroneously perform the editing task.