Task Alignment: A Simple Proxy for Practical Model Merging Across Diverse Vision Tasks — Paper

Abstract

Efficiently merging several models fine-tuned for different tasks, but stemming from the same pretrained base model, is of great practical interest. Despite extensive prior work, most evaluations of model merging in computer vision are restricted to image classification using CLIP, where different classification datasets define different tasks. In this work, our goal is to make model merging more practical and show its relevance on challenging scenarios beyond this specific setting. In most vision scenarios, different tasks rely on trainable and usually heterogeneous decoders. Differently from previous studies with frozen decoders, where merged models can be evaluated right away, the non-trivial cost of decoder training renders hyperparameter selection based on downstream performance impractical. To address this, we introduce the task alignment proxy, and show how it can be used to speed up hyperparameter selection by orders of magnitude while retaining performance. Equipped with the task alignment proxy, we extend the applicability of model merging to multi-task vision models beyond CLIP-based classification. Project page: https://europe.naverlabs.com/task-alignment

Authors 8

Pau de Jorge, C\'esar Roberto de Souza, Bj\"orn Michele, Mert B\"ulent Sar{\i}y{\i}ld{\i}z, Philippe Weinzaepfel, Florent Perronnin, Diane Larlus, Yannis Kalantidis

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2604.12935
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Arxiv announce type: replace
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
arXiv id: 2604.12935
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Categories: cs.CV
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2604.12935
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Primary category: cs.CV
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

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Authors: Pau de Jorge, C\'esar Roberto de Souza, Bj\"orn Michele

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Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
cs.CV	11 Sept 2026 21:03 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

11 Sept 2026
New paperPaperTask Alignment: A Simple Proxy for Practical Model Merging Across Diverse Vision Tasks
New paper: Task Alignment: A Simple Proxy for Practical Model Merging Across Diverse Vision Tasks
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Source	Document	Type	Tier	Last observed	Snapshots
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.CV	feed	T1· Official	2 h ago	1

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