# VisionGPT: Vision-Language Understanding Agent Using Generalized Multimodal Framework

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09027 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09027/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 27 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [Pre-train, Prompt, and Predict: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Methods in Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13586/) (2021)
- [HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Face](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17580/) (2023)
- [VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05973/) (2023)
- [Cross-Task Generalization via Natural Language Crowdsourcing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08773/) (2021)
- [Visual ChatGPT: Talking, Drawing and Editing with Visual Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04671/) (2023)
- [InternImage: Exploring Large-Scale Vision Foundation Models with Deformable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05778/) (2022)
- [Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing via Large Pre-Trained Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01243/) (2021)
- [VLMo: Unified Vision-Language Pre-Training with Mixture-of-Modality-Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02358/) (2021)
- [Faster Segment Anything: Towards Lightweight SAM for Mobile Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14289/) (2023)
- [Generating Images with Multimodal Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17216/) (2023)
- [VIOLET : End-to-End Video-Language Transformers with Masked Visual-token Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12681/) (2021)
- [Physically Grounded Vision-Language Models for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02561/) (2023)
- [Detecting Everything in the Open World: Towards Universal Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11749/) (2023)
- [Large Multimodal Models: Notes on CVPR 2023 Tutorial](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14895/) (2023)
- [WorldGPT: A Sora-Inspired Video AI Agent as Rich World Models from Text and Image Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07944/) (2024)
- [UnifiedVisionGPT: Streamlining Vision-Oriented AI through Generalized Multimodal Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10125/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models: Concepts, Progress, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04769/) (2025)
- [FairCLIP: Harnessing Fairness in Vision-Language Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19949/) (2024)
- [Look, Compare, Decide: Alleviating Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Models via Multi-View Multi-Path Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17150/) (2024)
- [MUSES: 3D-Controllable Image Generation via Multi-Modal Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10605/) (2024)
- [Fair-MoE: Fairness-Oriented Mixture of Experts in Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06094/) (2025)
- [Seeing is Deceiving: Exploitation of Visual Pathways in Multi-Modal Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05056/) (2024)
- [VIBE: Can a VLM Read the Room?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11162/) (2025)
- [VICoT-Agent: A Vision-Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Framework for Interpretable Multimodal Reasoning and Scalable Remote Sensing Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20085/) (2025)
- [Mitigating Multilingual Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00550/) (2024)
- [OWLViz: An Open-World Benchmark for Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07631/) (2025)
- [GLANCE: A Global-Local Coordination Multi-Agent Framework for Music-Grounded Non-Linear Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05076/) (2026)
- [Chain-of-Procedure: Hierarchical Visual-Language Reasoning for Procedural QA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14928/) (2026)
- [GCS-M3VLT: Guided Context Self-Attention based Multi-modal Medical Vision Language Transformer for Retinal Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17251/) (2024)
- [Surgical AI Copilot: Energy-Based Fourier Gradient Low-Rank Adaptation for Surgical LLM Agent Reasoning and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09474/) (2025)
- [Next-Scale Autoregressive Models are Zero-Shot Single-Image Object View Synthesizers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13588/) (2025)
- [RailVQA: A Benchmark and Framework for Efficient Interpretable Visual Cognition in Automatic Train Operation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27112/) (2026)
- [Natural Adversaries: Fuzzing Autonomous Vehicles with Realistic Roadside Object Placements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10562/) (2024)
- [ExposureEngine: Oriented Logo Detection and Sponsor Visibility Analytics in Sports Broadcasts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04739/) (2025)
- [DREAM: Dynamic Retinal Enhancement with Adaptive Multi-modal Fusion for Expert Precision Medical Report Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17209/) (2026)
- [ArtAnno: Annotating Implicit Semantics in Artworks through LLM Agent-Driven Bidirectional Human-AI Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05026/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the emergence of large language models (LLMs) and vision foundation models, how to combine the intelligence and capacity of these open-sourced or API-available models to achieve open-world visual perception remains an open question. In this paper, we introduce VisionGPT to consolidate and automate the integration of state-of-the-art foundation models, thereby facilitating vision-language understanding and the development of vision-oriented AI. VisionGPT builds upon a generalized multimodal framework that distinguishes itself through three key features: (1) utilizing LLMs (e.g., LLaMA-2) as the pivot to break down users' requests into detailed action proposals to call suitable foundation models; (2) integrating multi-source outputs from foundation models automatically and generating comprehensive responses for users; (3) adaptable to a wide range of applications such as text-conditioned image understanding/generation/editing and visual question answering. This paper outlines the architecture and capabilities of VisionGPT, demonstrating its potential to revolutionize the field of computer vision through enhanced efficiency, versatility, and generalization, and performance. Our code and models will be made publicly available. Keywords: VisionGPT, Open-world visual perception, Vision-language understanding, Large language model, and Foundation model