SEA: Supervised Embedding Alignment for Token-Level Visual-Textual Integration in MLLMs

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Hauptverfasser: Yin, Yuanyang, Zhao, Yaqi, Zhang, Yajie, Zhang, Yuanxing, Lin, Ke, Wang, Jiahao, Tao, Xin, Wan, Pengfei, Zhang, Wentao, Zhao, Feng
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Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Yin, Yuanyang
Zhao, Yaqi
Zhang, Yajie
Zhang, Yuanxing
Lin, Ke
Wang, Jiahao
Tao, Xin
Wan, Pengfei
Zhang, Wentao
Zhao, Feng
author_facet Yin, Yuanyang
Zhao, Yaqi
Zhang, Yajie
Zhang, Yuanxing
Lin, Ke
Wang, Jiahao
Tao, Xin
Wan, Pengfei
Zhang, Wentao
Zhao, Feng
contents Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities by integrating visual and textual inputs, yet modality alignment remains one of the most challenging aspects. Current MLLMs typically rely on simple adapter architectures and pretraining approaches to bridge vision encoders with large language models (LLM), guided by image-level supervision. We identify this paradigm often leads to suboptimal alignment between modalities, significantly constraining the LLM's ability to properly interpret and reason with visual features particularly for smaller language models. This limitation degrades overall performance-particularly for smaller language models where capacity constraints are more pronounced and adaptation capabilities are limited. To address this fundamental limitation, we propose Supervised Embedding Alignment (SEA), a token-level supervision alignment method that enables more precise visual-text alignment during pretraining. SEA introduces minimal computational overhead while preserving language capabilities and substantially improving cross-modal understanding. Our comprehensive analyses reveal critical insights into the adapter's role in multimodal integration, and extensive experiments demonstrate that SEA consistently improves performance across various model sizes, with smaller models benefiting the most (average performance gain of 7.61% for Gemma-2B). This work establishes a foundation for developing more effective alignment strategies for future multimodal systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_11813
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SEA: Supervised Embedding Alignment for Token-Level Visual-Textual Integration in MLLMs
Yin, Yuanyang
Zhao, Yaqi
Zhang, Yajie
Zhang, Yuanxing
Lin, Ke
Wang, Jiahao
Tao, Xin
Wan, Pengfei
Zhang, Wentao
Zhao, Feng
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities by integrating visual and textual inputs, yet modality alignment remains one of the most challenging aspects. Current MLLMs typically rely on simple adapter architectures and pretraining approaches to bridge vision encoders with large language models (LLM), guided by image-level supervision. We identify this paradigm often leads to suboptimal alignment between modalities, significantly constraining the LLM's ability to properly interpret and reason with visual features particularly for smaller language models. This limitation degrades overall performance-particularly for smaller language models where capacity constraints are more pronounced and adaptation capabilities are limited. To address this fundamental limitation, we propose Supervised Embedding Alignment (SEA), a token-level supervision alignment method that enables more precise visual-text alignment during pretraining. SEA introduces minimal computational overhead while preserving language capabilities and substantially improving cross-modal understanding. Our comprehensive analyses reveal critical insights into the adapter's role in multimodal integration, and extensive experiments demonstrate that SEA consistently improves performance across various model sizes, with smaller models benefiting the most (average performance gain of 7.61% for Gemma-2B). This work establishes a foundation for developing more effective alignment strategies for future multimodal systems.
title SEA: Supervised Embedding Alignment for Token-Level Visual-Textual Integration in MLLMs
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.11813