# ChatEarthNet: A Global-Scale Image-Text Dataset Empowering Vision-Language Geo-Foundation Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11325 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11325/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [Vision-Language Models for Vision Tasks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00685/) (2023)
- [Remote Sensing Image Scene Classification: Benchmark and State of the Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00121/) (2017)
- [MiniGPT-v2: large language model as a unified interface for vision-language multi-task learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09478/) (2023)
- [DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10398/) (2017)
- [RemoteCLIP: A Vision Language Foundation Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11029/) (2023)
- [GeoChat: Grounded Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15826/) (2023)
- [RSGPT: A Remote Sensing Vision Language Model and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15266/) (2023)
- [RSVQA: Visual Question Answering for Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07333/) (2020)
- [Exploring Models and Data for Remote Sensing Image Caption Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07835/) (2017)
- [SatlasPretrain: A Large-Scale Dataset for Remote Sensing Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15660/) (2022)
- [RS5M and GeoRSCLIP: A Large Scale Vision-Language Dataset and A Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11300/) (2023)
- [SkyScript: A Large and Semantically Diverse Vision-Language Dataset for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12856/) (2023)
- [RSVG: Exploring Data and Models for Visual Grounding on Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12634/) (2022)
- [Vision-Language Models in Remote Sensing: Current Progress and Future Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05726/) (2023)
- [RRSIS: Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08625/) (2023)
- [EarthNets: Empowering AI in Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04936/) (2022)
- [From Easy to Hard: Learning Language-guided Curriculum for Visual Question Answering on Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03147/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models for Captioning and Retrieving Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06475/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [TEOChat: A Large Vision-Language Assistant for Temporal Earth Observation Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06234/) (2024)
- [GeoLLaVA-8K: Scaling Remote-Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models to 8K Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21375/) (2025)
- [Towards Vision-Language Geo-Foundation Model: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09385/) (2024)
- [On the Foundations of Earth and Climate Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04285/) (2024)
- [Vision-Language Modeling Meets Remote Sensing: Models, Datasets and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14361/) (2025)
- [RSVLM-QA: A Benchmark Dataset for Remote Sensing Vision Language Model-based Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07918/) (2025)
- [Beyond the Visible: Multispectral Vision-Language Learning for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15969/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Remote Sensing Vision-Language Models Through MLLM and LLM-Based High-Quality Image-Text Dataset Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16716/) (2025)
- [DOFA-CLIP: Multimodal Vision-Language Foundation Models for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06312/) (2025)
- [Remote Sensing Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Bridging Remote Sensing Imagery and Comprehensive Knowledge with a Multi-Modal Dataset and Retrieval-Augmented Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04988/) (2025)
- [A large-scale image-text dataset benchmark for farmland segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23106/) (2025)
- [SSL4Eco: A Global Seasonal Dataset for Geospatial Foundation Models in Ecology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18256/) (2025)
- [Earth-OneVision: Extending Remote Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models to More Sensor Modalities and Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10819/) (2026)
- [From Pixels to Prose: Advancing Multi-Modal Language Models for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05826/) (2024)
- [Survey of Multimodal Geospatial Foundation Models: Techniques, Applications, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22964/) (2025)
- [OSMDA: OpenStreetMap-based Domain Adaptation for Remote Sensing VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11804/) (2026)
- [A Unified Foundation Model for All-in-One Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Image Restoration and Fusion with Language Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05629/) (2026)
- [BigEarthNet.txt: A Large-Scale Multi-Sensor Image-Text Dataset and Benchmark for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29630/) (2026)
- [GeoMeld: Toward Semantically Grounded Foundation Models for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10591/) (2026)
- [Semantic search for 100M+ galaxy images using AI-generated captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11982/) (2025)
- [Spectrally Distilled Representations Aligned with Instruction-Augmented LLMs for Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22613/) (2026)
- [ForestHG-Trace: Traceable Long-Horizon Ecological Reasoning over Large-Scale Forest Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27590/) (2026)
- [Filling Before Advancing: Capability-Gap-Driven Post-Training for Scenario-Specialized Remote Sensing MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22205/) (2026)
- [OmniRSI: Taming Latent Diffusion for Unified Multimodal Remote Sensing Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15414/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

An in-depth comprehension of global land cover is essential in Earth observation, forming the foundation for a multitude of applications. Although remote sensing technology has advanced rapidly, leading to a proliferation of satellite imagery, the inherent complexity of these images often makes them difficult for non-expert users to understand. Natural language, as a carrier of human knowledge, can be a bridge between common users and complicated satellite imagery. In this context, we introduce a global-scale, high-quality image-text dataset for remote sensing, providing natural language descriptions for Sentinel-2 data to facilitate the understanding of satellite imagery for common users. Specifically, we utilize Sentinel-2 data for its global coverage as the foundational image source, employing semantic segmentation labels from the European Space Agency's (ESA) WorldCover project to enrich the descriptions of land covers. By conducting in-depth semantic analysis, we formulate detailed prompts to elicit rich descriptions from ChatGPT. To enhance the dataset's quality, we introduce the manual verification process. This step involves manual inspection and correction to refine the dataset, thus significantly improving its accuracy and quality. Finally, we offer the community ChatEarthNet, a large-scale image-text dataset characterized by global coverage, high quality, wide-ranging diversity, and detailed descriptions. ChatEarthNet consists of 163,488 image-text pairs with captions generated by ChatGPT-3.5 and an additional 10,000 image-text pairs with captions generated by ChatGPT-4V(ision). This dataset has significant potential for training vision-language geo-foundation models and evaluating large vision-language models for remote sensing. The dataset will be made publicly available.