Balancing Multimodal Learning via Functional Progress

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Multimodal learning often suffers from modality imbalance, where the joint optimization process is dominated by a single modality. Existing methods typically estimate modality imbalance from score disparities derived from prediction uncertainty or optimization statistics. However, due to distinct prediction uncertainty and learning dynamics across modalities, direct comparison of such scores may misinterpret intrinsic modality differences as progress gaps, leading to biased imbalance estimation. In this paper, we propose Function-Space Guided Multimodal Optimization (FGMO), which leverages a function-space progress signal to assess modality-wise optimization progress and coordinate optimization across modalities to alleviate modality imbalance. Specifically, we introduce Functional Progress Estimation (FPE) to measure each modality's update-induced function-space response and calibrate it against a loss-aligned unimodal reference, producing a comparable progress signal. Based on this signal, Functional Response Control (FRC) redistributes modality-level function-space budgets and realizes the target responses through tensor-wise learning-rate adjustment. Theoretical analysis establishes a one-step target-contraction property of FRC under bounded controller-state mismatch, and extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of FGMO across multiple multimodal benchmarks.