Aurelia: Test-time Reasoning Distillation in Audio-Visual LLMs (2503.23219v1)

Abstract: Recent advancements in reasoning optimization have greatly enhanced the performance of LLMs. However, existing work fails to address the complexities of audio-visual scenarios, underscoring the need for further research. In this paper, we introduce AURELIA, a novel actor-critic based audio-visual (AV) reasoning framework that distills structured, step-by-step reasoning into AVLLMs at test time, improving their ability to process complex multi-modal inputs without additional training or fine-tuning. To further advance AVLLM reasoning skills, we present AVReasonBench, a challenging benchmark comprising 4500 audio-visual questions, each paired with detailed step-by-step reasoning. Our benchmark spans six distinct tasks, including AV-GeoIQ, which evaluates AV reasoning combined with geographical and cultural knowledge. Evaluating 18 AVLLMs on AVReasonBench reveals significant limitations in their multi-modal reasoning capabilities. Using AURELIA, we achieve up to a 100% relative improvement, demonstrating its effectiveness. This performance gain highlights the potential of reasoning-enhanced data generation for advancing AVLLMs in real-world applications. Our code and data will be publicly released at: https: //github.com/schowdhury671/aurelia.