Efficient Multi-modal Long Context Learning for Training-free Adaptation

Zehong Ma, Shiliang Zhang, Longhui Wei, Qi Tian
Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 267:42236-42251, 2025.

Abstract

Traditional approaches to adapting multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) to new tasks have relied heavily on fine-tuning. This paper introduces Efficient Multi-Modal Long Context Learning (EMLoC), a novel training-free alternative that embeds demonstration examples directly into the model input. EMLoC offers a more efficient, flexible, and scalable solution for task adaptation. Because extremely lengthy inputs introduce prohibitive computational and memory overhead, EMLoC contributes a chunk-wise compression mechanism combined with layer-wise adaptive pruning. It condenses long-context multimodal inputs into compact, task-specific memory representations. By adaptively pruning tokens at each layer under a Jensen-Shannon divergence constraint, our method achieves a dramatic reduction in inference complexity without sacrificing performance. This approach is the first to seamlessly integrate compression and pruning techniques for multi-modal long-context learning, offering a scalable and efficient solution for real-world applications. Extensive experiments on diverse vision-language benchmarks demonstrate that EMLoC achieves performance on par with or superior to naive long-context approaches. Our results highlight the potential of EMLoC as a groundbreaking framework for efficient and flexible adaptation of multi-modal models in resource-constrained environments. Codes are publicly available at https://github.com/Zehong-Ma/EMLoC.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v267-ma25v, title = {Efficient Multi-modal Long Context Learning for Training-free Adaptation}, author = {Ma, Zehong and Zhang, Shiliang and Wei, Longhui and Tian, Qi}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning}, pages = {42236--42251}, year = {2025}, editor = {Singh, Aarti and Fazel, Maryam and Hsu, Daniel and Lacoste-Julien, Simon and Berkenkamp, Felix and Maharaj, Tegan and Wagstaff, Kiri and Zhu, Jerry}, volume = {267}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {13--19 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v267/main/assets/ma25v/ma25v.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/ma25v.html}, abstract = {Traditional approaches to adapting multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) to new tasks have relied heavily on fine-tuning. This paper introduces Efficient Multi-Modal Long Context Learning (EMLoC), a novel training-free alternative that embeds demonstration examples directly into the model input. EMLoC offers a more efficient, flexible, and scalable solution for task adaptation. Because extremely lengthy inputs introduce prohibitive computational and memory overhead, EMLoC contributes a chunk-wise compression mechanism combined with layer-wise adaptive pruning. It condenses long-context multimodal inputs into compact, task-specific memory representations. By adaptively pruning tokens at each layer under a Jensen-Shannon divergence constraint, our method achieves a dramatic reduction in inference complexity without sacrificing performance. This approach is the first to seamlessly integrate compression and pruning techniques for multi-modal long-context learning, offering a scalable and efficient solution for real-world applications. Extensive experiments on diverse vision-language benchmarks demonstrate that EMLoC achieves performance on par with or superior to naive long-context approaches. Our results highlight the potential of EMLoC as a groundbreaking framework for efficient and flexible adaptation of multi-modal models in resource-constrained environments. Codes are publicly available at https://github.com/Zehong-Ma/EMLoC.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Efficient Multi-modal Long Context Learning for Training-free Adaptation %A Zehong Ma %A Shiliang Zhang %A Longhui Wei %A Qi Tian %B Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2025 %E Aarti Singh %E Maryam Fazel %E Daniel Hsu %E Simon Lacoste-Julien %E Felix Berkenkamp %E Tegan Maharaj %E Kiri Wagstaff %E Jerry Zhu %F pmlr-v267-ma25v %I PMLR %P 42236--42251 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/ma25v.html %V 267 %X Traditional approaches to adapting multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) to new tasks have relied heavily on fine-tuning. This paper introduces Efficient Multi-Modal Long Context Learning (EMLoC), a novel training-free alternative that embeds demonstration examples directly into the model input. EMLoC offers a more efficient, flexible, and scalable solution for task adaptation. Because extremely lengthy inputs introduce prohibitive computational and memory overhead, EMLoC contributes a chunk-wise compression mechanism combined with layer-wise adaptive pruning. It condenses long-context multimodal inputs into compact, task-specific memory representations. By adaptively pruning tokens at each layer under a Jensen-Shannon divergence constraint, our method achieves a dramatic reduction in inference complexity without sacrificing performance. This approach is the first to seamlessly integrate compression and pruning techniques for multi-modal long-context learning, offering a scalable and efficient solution for real-world applications. Extensive experiments on diverse vision-language benchmarks demonstrate that EMLoC achieves performance on par with or superior to naive long-context approaches. Our results highlight the potential of EMLoC as a groundbreaking framework for efficient and flexible adaptation of multi-modal models in resource-constrained environments. Codes are publicly available at https://github.com/Zehong-Ma/EMLoC.
APA
Ma, Z., Zhang, S., Wei, L. & Tian, Q.. (2025). Efficient Multi-modal Long Context Learning for Training-free Adaptation. Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 267:42236-42251 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/ma25v.html.

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