Robust Multimodal Large Language Models Against Modality Conflict

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhang, Zongmeng, Zhou, Wengang, Zhao, Jie, Li, Houqiang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Zhang, Zongmeng
Zhou, Wengang
Zhao, Jie
Li, Houqiang
author_facet Zhang, Zongmeng
Zhou, Wengang
Zhao, Jie
Li, Houqiang
contents Despite the impressive capabilities of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) in vision-language tasks, they are prone to hallucinations in real-world scenarios. This paper investigates the hallucination phenomenon in MLLMs from the perspective of modality conflict. Unlike existing works focusing on the conflicts between model responses and inputs, we study the inherent conflicts in inputs from different modalities that place MLLMs in a dilemma and directly lead to hallucinations. We formally define the modality conflict and construct a dataset named Multimodal Modality Conflict (MMMC) to simulate this phenomenon in vision-language tasks. Three methods based on prompt engineering, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning are proposed to alleviate the hallucination caused by modality conflict. Extensive experiments are conducted on the MMMC dataset to analyze the merits and demerits of these methods. Our results show that the reinforcement learning method achieves the best performance in mitigating the hallucination under modality conflict, while the supervised fine-tuning method shows promising and stable performance. Our work sheds light on the unnoticed modality conflict that leads to hallucinations and provides more insights into the robustness of MLLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_07151
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust Multimodal Large Language Models Against Modality Conflict
Zhang, Zongmeng
Zhou, Wengang
Zhao, Jie
Li, Houqiang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Despite the impressive capabilities of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) in vision-language tasks, they are prone to hallucinations in real-world scenarios. This paper investigates the hallucination phenomenon in MLLMs from the perspective of modality conflict. Unlike existing works focusing on the conflicts between model responses and inputs, we study the inherent conflicts in inputs from different modalities that place MLLMs in a dilemma and directly lead to hallucinations. We formally define the modality conflict and construct a dataset named Multimodal Modality Conflict (MMMC) to simulate this phenomenon in vision-language tasks. Three methods based on prompt engineering, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning are proposed to alleviate the hallucination caused by modality conflict. Extensive experiments are conducted on the MMMC dataset to analyze the merits and demerits of these methods. Our results show that the reinforcement learning method achieves the best performance in mitigating the hallucination under modality conflict, while the supervised fine-tuning method shows promising and stable performance. Our work sheds light on the unnoticed modality conflict that leads to hallucinations and provides more insights into the robustness of MLLMs.
title Robust Multimodal Large Language Models Against Modality Conflict
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07151