Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: R, Shashanka B, R, Mohith Charan, F, Seema Banu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00185
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910017293123584
author R, Shashanka B
R, Mohith Charan
F, Seema Banu
author_facet R, Shashanka B
R, Mohith Charan
F, Seema Banu
contents Chunking has emerged as a critical technique that enhances generative models by grounding their responses in efficiently segmented knowledge [1]. While initially developed for unimodal (primarily textual) domains, recent advances in multimodal foundation models have extended chunking approaches to incorporate diverse data types, including images, audio, and video [2]. A critical component underpinning the success of these systems is the chunking strategy how large, continuous streams of multimodal data are segmented into semantically meaningful units suitable for processing [3]. Despite its importance, chunking remains an under-explored area, especially in the context of multimodal systems where modality-specific constraints, semantic preservation, and alignment across modalities introduce unique challenges. Our goal is to consolidating the landscape of multimodal chunking strategies, providing researchers and practitioners with a technical foundation and design space for developing more effective and efficient multimodal AI systems. This survey paves the way for innovations in robust chunking pipelines that scale with modality complexity, enhance processing accuracy, and improve generative coherence in real-world applications. This survey provides a comprehensive taxonomy and technical analysis of chunking strategies tailored for each modality: text, images, audio, video, and cross-modal data. We examine classical and modern approaches such as fixed-size token windowing, recursive text splitting, object-centric visual chunking, silence-based audio segmentation, and scene detection in videos. Each approach is analyzed in terms of its underlying methodology, supporting tools (e.g., LangChain, Detectron2, PySceneDetect), benefits, and challenges, particularly those related to granularity-context trade-offs and multimodal alignment. Furthermore, we explore emerging cross-modal chunking strategies that aim to preserve alignment and semantic consistency across disparate data types [4]. We also include comparative insights, highlight open problems such as asynchronous information density and noisy alignment signals, and identify opportunities for future research in adaptive, learning-based, and task-specific chunking.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_00185
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Chunking Strategies for Multimodal AI Systems
R, Shashanka B
R, Mohith Charan
F, Seema Banu
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Chunking has emerged as a critical technique that enhances generative models by grounding their responses in efficiently segmented knowledge [1]. While initially developed for unimodal (primarily textual) domains, recent advances in multimodal foundation models have extended chunking approaches to incorporate diverse data types, including images, audio, and video [2]. A critical component underpinning the success of these systems is the chunking strategy how large, continuous streams of multimodal data are segmented into semantically meaningful units suitable for processing [3]. Despite its importance, chunking remains an under-explored area, especially in the context of multimodal systems where modality-specific constraints, semantic preservation, and alignment across modalities introduce unique challenges. Our goal is to consolidating the landscape of multimodal chunking strategies, providing researchers and practitioners with a technical foundation and design space for developing more effective and efficient multimodal AI systems. This survey paves the way for innovations in robust chunking pipelines that scale with modality complexity, enhance processing accuracy, and improve generative coherence in real-world applications. This survey provides a comprehensive taxonomy and technical analysis of chunking strategies tailored for each modality: text, images, audio, video, and cross-modal data. We examine classical and modern approaches such as fixed-size token windowing, recursive text splitting, object-centric visual chunking, silence-based audio segmentation, and scene detection in videos. Each approach is analyzed in terms of its underlying methodology, supporting tools (e.g., LangChain, Detectron2, PySceneDetect), benefits, and challenges, particularly those related to granularity-context trade-offs and multimodal alignment. Furthermore, we explore emerging cross-modal chunking strategies that aim to preserve alignment and semantic consistency across disparate data types [4]. We also include comparative insights, highlight open problems such as asynchronous information density and noisy alignment signals, and identify opportunities for future research in adaptive, learning-based, and task-specific chunking.
title Chunking Strategies for Multimodal AI Systems
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00185