GIMMICK -- Globally Inclusive Multimodal Multitask Cultural Knowledge Benchmarking

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Schneider, Florian, Holtermann, Carolin, Biemann, Chris, Lauscher, Anne
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866915161153994752
author Schneider, Florian
Holtermann, Carolin
Biemann, Chris
Lauscher, Anne
author_facet Schneider, Florian
Holtermann, Carolin
Biemann, Chris
Lauscher, Anne
contents Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have recently gained attention due to their distinctive performance and broad applicability. While it has been previously shown that their efficacy in usage scenarios involving non-Western contexts falls short, existing studies are limited in scope, covering just a narrow range of cultures, focusing exclusively on a small number of cultural aspects, or evaluating a limited selection of models on a single task only. Towards globally inclusive LVLM research, we introduce GIMMICK, an extensive multimodal benchmark designed to assess a broad spectrum of cultural knowledge across 144 countries representing six global macro-regions. GIMMICK comprises six tasks built upon three new datasets that span 728 unique cultural events or facets on which we evaluated 20 LVLMs and 11 LLMs, including five proprietary and 26 open-weight models of all sizes. We systematically examine (1) regional cultural biases, (2) the influence of model size, (3) input modalities, and (4) external cues. Our analyses reveal strong biases toward Western cultures across models and tasks and highlight strong correlations between model size and performance, as well as the effectiveness of multimodal input and external geographic cues. We further find that models have more knowledge of tangible than intangible aspects (e.g., food vs. rituals) and that they excel in recognizing broad cultural origins but struggle with a more nuanced understanding.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_13766
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GIMMICK -- Globally Inclusive Multimodal Multitask Cultural Knowledge Benchmarking
Schneider, Florian
Holtermann, Carolin
Biemann, Chris
Lauscher, Anne
Computation and Language
Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have recently gained attention due to their distinctive performance and broad applicability. While it has been previously shown that their efficacy in usage scenarios involving non-Western contexts falls short, existing studies are limited in scope, covering just a narrow range of cultures, focusing exclusively on a small number of cultural aspects, or evaluating a limited selection of models on a single task only. Towards globally inclusive LVLM research, we introduce GIMMICK, an extensive multimodal benchmark designed to assess a broad spectrum of cultural knowledge across 144 countries representing six global macro-regions. GIMMICK comprises six tasks built upon three new datasets that span 728 unique cultural events or facets on which we evaluated 20 LVLMs and 11 LLMs, including five proprietary and 26 open-weight models of all sizes. We systematically examine (1) regional cultural biases, (2) the influence of model size, (3) input modalities, and (4) external cues. Our analyses reveal strong biases toward Western cultures across models and tasks and highlight strong correlations between model size and performance, as well as the effectiveness of multimodal input and external geographic cues. We further find that models have more knowledge of tangible than intangible aspects (e.g., food vs. rituals) and that they excel in recognizing broad cultural origins but struggle with a more nuanced understanding.
title GIMMICK -- Globally Inclusive Multimodal Multitask Cultural Knowledge Benchmarking
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13766