NanoVLMs: How small can we go and still make coherent Vision Language Models?

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Agarwalla, Mukund, Kumar, Himanshu, Dandekar, Raj, Dandekar, Rajat, Panat, Sreedath
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Agarwalla, Mukund
Kumar, Himanshu
Dandekar, Raj
Dandekar, Rajat
Panat, Sreedath
author_facet Agarwalla, Mukund
Kumar, Himanshu
Dandekar, Raj
Dandekar, Rajat
Panat, Sreedath
contents Vision-Language Models (VLMs), such as GPT-4V and Llama 3.2 vision, have garnered significant research attention for their ability to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) in multimodal tasks. However, their potential is constrained by inherent challenges, including proprietary restrictions, substantial computational demands, and limited accessibility. Smaller models, such as GIT and BLIP, exhibit marked limitations, often failing to generate coherent and consistent text beyond a few tokens, even with extensive training. This underscores a pivotal inquiry: how small can a VLM be and still produce fluent and consistent text? Drawing inspiration from the exceptional learning process of 3-4 year old children, who rely heavily on visual cues for understanding and communication, we introduce two novel datasets: ShortDesc (featuring concise image descriptions) and LongDesc (containing more detailed image descriptions). These datasets consist of image-text pairs where the text is restricted to the simple vocabulary and syntax typically used by young children, generated with a scaled-down model, GPT-4o. Using these datasets, we demonstrate that it is possible to train VLMs that are significantly smaller, up to 10 times smaller than state of the art(SOTA) small VLMs while maintaining architectural simplicity. To evaluate the outputs, we leverage GPT-4o to grade the text, as if stories written by students, on creativity, meaningfulness, and consistency, assigning scores out of 10. This method addresses limitations of standard benchmarks by accommodating unstructured outputs and providing a multidimensional evaluation of the model capabilities. Our findings contribute to the development of lightweight, accessible multimodal models for resource constrained environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_07838
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle NanoVLMs: How small can we go and still make coherent Vision Language Models?
Agarwalla, Mukund
Kumar, Himanshu
Dandekar, Raj
Dandekar, Rajat
Panat, Sreedath
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Vision-Language Models (VLMs), such as GPT-4V and Llama 3.2 vision, have garnered significant research attention for their ability to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) in multimodal tasks. However, their potential is constrained by inherent challenges, including proprietary restrictions, substantial computational demands, and limited accessibility. Smaller models, such as GIT and BLIP, exhibit marked limitations, often failing to generate coherent and consistent text beyond a few tokens, even with extensive training. This underscores a pivotal inquiry: how small can a VLM be and still produce fluent and consistent text? Drawing inspiration from the exceptional learning process of 3-4 year old children, who rely heavily on visual cues for understanding and communication, we introduce two novel datasets: ShortDesc (featuring concise image descriptions) and LongDesc (containing more detailed image descriptions). These datasets consist of image-text pairs where the text is restricted to the simple vocabulary and syntax typically used by young children, generated with a scaled-down model, GPT-4o. Using these datasets, we demonstrate that it is possible to train VLMs that are significantly smaller, up to 10 times smaller than state of the art(SOTA) small VLMs while maintaining architectural simplicity. To evaluate the outputs, we leverage GPT-4o to grade the text, as if stories written by students, on creativity, meaningfulness, and consistency, assigning scores out of 10. This method addresses limitations of standard benchmarks by accommodating unstructured outputs and providing a multidimensional evaluation of the model capabilities. Our findings contribute to the development of lightweight, accessible multimodal models for resource constrained environments.
title NanoVLMs: How small can we go and still make coherent Vision Language Models?
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07838