Evolving Generalist Virtual Agents with Generative and Associative Memory
Zhenkui Zhang, Wendong Bu, Kaihang Pan, Bingchen Miao, Wenqiao Zhang, Guoming Wang, Wei Ji, Rui Tang
Abstract
Generalist Virtual Agents (GVAs) powered by Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) exhibit impressive capabilities. However, their long-term learning is hampered by a core limitation: a failure to evolve beyond existing trajectories. This stems from memory systems that treat experiences as isolated fragments and rely on brittle semantic retrieval, preventing the synthesis of novel solutions from disparate knowledge. To address this, we introduce CA3Mem, a framework inspired by the human hippocampus that organizes experiences into a structured memory graph. Leveraging this graph, CA3Mem features two key innovations: 1) a generative memory recombination mechanism that synthesizes novel solutions to drive agent evolution, and 2) an associative retrieval algorithm that employs spreading activation to recall a comprehensive and contextually-aware set of experiences. Experiments on OSWorld and WebArena demonstrate that CA3Mem significantly enhances agent capabilities, leading to marked improvements in long-horizon planning, compositional generalization for novel tasks, and continuous adaptation from experience.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{aaai2026_evolvinggenerali,
title = {Evolving Generalist Virtual Agents with Generative and Associative Memory},
author = {Zhenkui Zhang and Wendong Bu and Kaihang Pan and Bingchen Miao and Wenqiao Zhang and Guoming Wang and Wei Ji and Rui Tang and Juncheng Li and Siliang Tang},
booktitle = {AAAI 2026},
year = {2026}
}