Visual-RAG: Benchmarking Text-to-Image Retrieval Augmented Generation for Visual Knowledge Intensive Queries

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Hauptverfasser: Wu, Yin, Long, Quanyu, Li, Jing, Yu, Jianfei, Wang, Wenya
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Wu, Yin
Long, Quanyu
Li, Jing
Yu, Jianfei
Wang, Wenya
author_facet Wu, Yin
Long, Quanyu
Li, Jing
Yu, Jianfei
Wang, Wenya
contents Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a paradigm that augments large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge to tackle knowledge-intensive question answering. While several benchmarks evaluate Multimodal LLMs (MLLMs) under Multimodal RAG settings, they predominantly retrieve from textual corpora and do not explicitly assess how models exploit visual evidence during generation. Consequently, there still lacks benchmark that isolates and measures the contribution of retrieved images in RAG. We introduce Visual-RAG, a question-answering benchmark that targets visually grounded, knowledge-intensive questions. Unlike prior work, Visual-RAG requires text-to-image retrieval and the integration of retrieved clue images to extract visual evidence for answer generation. With Visual-RAG, we evaluate 5 open-source and 3 proprietary MLLMs, showcasing that images provide strong evidence in augmented generation. However, even state-of-the-art models struggle to efficiently extract and utilize visual knowledge. Our results highlight the need for improved visual retrieval, grounding, and attribution in multimodal RAG systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_16636
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Visual-RAG: Benchmarking Text-to-Image Retrieval Augmented Generation for Visual Knowledge Intensive Queries
Wu, Yin
Long, Quanyu
Li, Jing
Yu, Jianfei
Wang, Wenya
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a paradigm that augments large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge to tackle knowledge-intensive question answering. While several benchmarks evaluate Multimodal LLMs (MLLMs) under Multimodal RAG settings, they predominantly retrieve from textual corpora and do not explicitly assess how models exploit visual evidence during generation. Consequently, there still lacks benchmark that isolates and measures the contribution of retrieved images in RAG. We introduce Visual-RAG, a question-answering benchmark that targets visually grounded, knowledge-intensive questions. Unlike prior work, Visual-RAG requires text-to-image retrieval and the integration of retrieved clue images to extract visual evidence for answer generation. With Visual-RAG, we evaluate 5 open-source and 3 proprietary MLLMs, showcasing that images provide strong evidence in augmented generation. However, even state-of-the-art models struggle to efficiently extract and utilize visual knowledge. Our results highlight the need for improved visual retrieval, grounding, and attribution in multimodal RAG systems.
title Visual-RAG: Benchmarking Text-to-Image Retrieval Augmented Generation for Visual Knowledge Intensive Queries
topic Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16636