mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Reminding Multimodal Large Language Models of Object-aware Knowledge with Retrieved Tags

arXiv 2406.10839 ↗First posted 16 Jun 2024cs.CV cs.CLcited by 2

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → MLLM training and visual instruction tuning

Abstract (arXiv)

Despite recent advances in the general visual instruction-following ability of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), they still struggle with critical problems when required to provide a precise and detailed response to a visual instruction: (1) failure to identify novel objects or entities, (2) mention of non-existent objects, and (3) neglect of object's attributed details. Intuitive solutions include improving the size and quality of data or using larger foundation models. They show effectiveness in mitigating these issues, but at an expensive cost of collecting a vast amount of new data and introducing a significantly larger model. Standing at the intersection of these approaches, we examine the three object-oriented problems from the perspective of the image-to-text mapping process by the multimodal connector. In this paper, we first identify the limitations of multimodal connectors stemming from insufficient training data. Driven by this, we propose to enhance the mapping with retrieval-augmented tag tokens, which contain rich object-aware information such as object names and attributes. With our Tag-grounded visual instruction tuning with retrieval Augmentation (TUNA), we outperform baselines that share the same language model and training data on 12 benchmarks. Furthermore, we show the zero-shot capability of TUNA when provided with specific datastores.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in MLLM training and visual instruction tuning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 36 of its 55 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2024.

Builds on

36 of 55 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captions21 Nov
  2. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning5 Oct
  3. 2023MM-Vet: Evaluating Large Multimodal Models for Integrated Capabilities4 Aug
  4. 2023MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models23 Jun
  5. 2023InstructBLIP: Towards General-purpose Vision-Language Models with Instruction Tuning11 May
  6. 2023Otter: A Multi-Modal Model with In-Context Instruction Tuning5 May

Other references · 30

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18 more
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 2.

2 papers.

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  1. 2024List Items One by One: A New Data Source and Learning Paradigm for Multimodal LLMs
  2. 2025Region-Level Context-Aware Multimodal Understanding
  3. 2024MMEvol: Empowering Multimodal Large Language Models with Evol-Instruct
  4. 2025Visual Representation Alignment for Multimodal Large Language Models
  5. 2024MLAN: Language-Based Instruction Tuning Preserves and Transfers Knowledge in Multimodal Language Models
  6. 2024Multimodal Needle in a Haystack: Benchmarking Long-Context Capability of Multimodal Large Language Models
  7. 2023Text as Images: Can Multimodal Large Language Models Follow Printed Instructions in Pixels?
  8. 2024Rethinking Visual Prompting for Multimodal Large Language Models with External Knowledge