# Joint Visual and Text Prompting for Improved Object-Centric Perception with Multimodal Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04514 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04514/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 25 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Apr 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/vlm-benchmarks-and-visual-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03744/) (2023)
- [Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00190/) (2021)
- [OPT: Open Pre-trained Transformer Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01068/) (2022)
- [VQA: Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00468/) (2015)
- [BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05100/) (2022)
- [MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13394/) (2023)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12793/) (2023)
- [ClipCap: CLIP Prefix for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09734/) (2021)
- [mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04257/) (2023)
- [RLPrompt: Optimizing Discrete Text Prompts with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12548/) (2022)
- [InternLM-XComposer2: Mastering Free-form Text-Image Composition and Comprehension in Vision-Language Large Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16420/) (2024)
- [InternLM-XComposer: A Vision-Language Large Model for Advanced Text-image Comprehension and Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15112/) (2023)
- [SPHINX: The Joint Mixing of Weights, Tasks, and Visual Embeddings for Multi-modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07575/) (2023)
- [SPoT: Better Frozen Model Adaptation through Soft Prompt Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07904/) (2021)
- [PPT: Pre-trained Prompt Tuning for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04332/) (2021)
- [SVIT: Scaling up Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04087/) (2023)
- [Visual Question Answering: A Survey of Methods and Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.05910/) (2016)
- [Controllable Natural Language Generation with Contrastive Prefixes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13257/) (2022)
- [Unified Hallucination Detection for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03190/) (2024)
- [Input-Tuning: Adapting Unfamiliar Inputs to Frozen Pretrained Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03131/) (2022)
- [Visual Question Answering: A Survey on Techniques and Common Trends in Recent Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11033/) (2023)
- [Towards Transparent AI Systems: Interpreting Visual Question Answering Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.08974/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Image-of-Thought Prompting for Visual Reasoning Refinement in Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13872/) (2024)
- [EgoPlan-Bench2: A Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Model Planning in Real-World Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04447/) (2024)
- [Prompt-based Adaptation in Large-scale Vision Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13219/) (2025)
- [How Well Do Models Follow Visual Instructions? VIBE: A Systematic Benchmark for Visual Instruction-Driven Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01851/) (2026)
- [Med-GLIP: Advancing Medical Language-Image Pre-training with Large-scale Grounded Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10528/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Prompt Optimization: Why Not Leverage Multiple Modalities for MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09201/) (2025)
- [Autonomous Imagination: Closed-Loop Decomposition of Visual-to-Textual Conversion in Visual Reasoning for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18142/) (2024)
- [CAPO: Reinforcing Consistent Reasoning in Medical Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12849/) (2025)
- [Neural Network Reprogrammability: A Unified Theme on Model Reprogramming, Prompt Tuning, and Prompt Instruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04650/) (2025)
- [Fast or Slow? Integrating Fast Intuition and Deliberate Thinking for Enhancing Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00806/) (2025)
- [AutoV: Loss-Oriented Ranking for Visual Prompt Retrieval in LVLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16112/) (2025)
- [ZeroDexGrasp: Zero-Shot Task-Oriented Dexterous Grasp Synthesis with Prompt-Based Multi-Stage Semantic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13327/) (2025)
- [ViSA-Enhanced Aerial VLN: A Visual-Spatial Reasoning Enhanced Framework for Aerial Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08007/) (2026)
- [Lightweight Visual Reasoning for Socially-Aware Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03942/) (2026)
- [Integrating Multimodal Large Language Model Knowledge into Amodal Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28333/) (2026)
- [From Structure to Synergy: A Survey of Vision-Language Perception Paradigm Evolution in Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26196/) (2026)
- [Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Zero-Shot Human-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18161/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) such as GPT-4V and Gemini Pro face challenges in achieving human-level perception in Visual Question Answering (VQA), particularly in object-oriented perception tasks which demand fine-grained understanding of object identities, locations or attributes, as indicated by empirical findings. This is mainly due to their limited capability to effectively integrate complex visual cues with textual information and potential object hallucinations. In this paper, we present a novel approach, Joint Visual and Text Prompting (VTPrompt), that employs fine-grained visual information to enhance the capability of MLLMs in VQA, especially for object-oriented perception. VTPrompt merges visual and text prompts to extract key concepts from textual questions and employs a detection model to highlight relevant objects as visual prompts in images. The processed images alongside text prompts are subsequently fed into MLLMs to produce more accurate answers. Our experiments with GPT-4V and Gemini Pro, on three benchmarks, i.e., MME , MMB and POPE, demonstrate significant improvements. Particularly, our method led to a score improvement of up to 183.5 for GPT-4V on MME and enhanced MMB performance by 8.17% for GPT-4V and 15.69% for Gemini Pro.