LLaVA-Read: Enhancing Reading Ability of Multimodal Large Language Models

27 Sept 2024 (modified: 05 Feb 2025)Submitted to ICLR 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY 4.0
Keywords: Multimodal Large Language Models, Text-rich Images, Visual Text Understanding
TL;DR: We present LLaVA-Read, a multimodal large language model that utilizes dual visual encoders along with a visual text encoder.
Abstract: Multimodal large language models have demonstrated impressive capabilities in understanding and manipulating images. However, many of these models struggle with comprehending intensive textual contents embedded within the images, primarily due to the limited text recognition and layout understanding ability. To understand the sources of these limitations, we perform an exploratory analysis showing the drawbacks of classical visual encoders on visual text understanding. Hence, we present LLaVA-Read, a multimodal large language model that utilizes dual visual encoders along with a visual text encoder. Our model surpasses existing state-of-the-art models in various text-rich image understanding tasks, showcasing enhanced comprehension of textual content within images. Together, our research suggests visual text understanding remains an open challenge and an \textit{efficient} visual text encoder is crucial for future successful multimodal systems.
Primary Area: applications to computer vision, audio, language, and other modalities
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Submission Number: 12036
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