How do Language Models Reshape Entity Alignment? A Survey of LM-Driven EA Methods: Advances, Benchmarks, and Future

Entity alignment (EA), critical for knowledge graph (KG) integration, identifies equivalent entities across different KGs. Traditional methods often face challenges in semantic understanding and scalability. The rise of language models (LMs), particularly large language models (LLMs), has provided powerful new strategies. This paper systematically reviews LM-driven EA methods, proposing a novel taxonomy that categorizes methods in three key stages: data preparation, feature embedding, and alignment. We further summarize key benchmarks, evaluation metrics, and discuss future directions. This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with a clear and comprehensive understanding of how language models reshape the field of entity alignment.