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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Momayiz, Imane, Elaouad, Soufiane Ait, Elmajjodi, Abdeljalil, Bouanane, Haitame
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08070
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Table of Contents:
  • Darija, the Moroccan Arabic dialect, is rich in visual content yet lacks specialized Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools. This paper introduces AtlasOCR, the first open-source Darija OCR model built by fine-tuning a 3B parameter Vision Language Model (VLM). We detail our comprehensive approach, from curating a unique Darija-specific dataset leveraging both synthetic generation with our OCRSmith library and carefully sourced real-world data, to implementing efficient fine-tuning strategies. We utilize QLoRA and Unsloth for parameter-efficient training of Qwen2.5-VL 3B and present comprehensive ablation studies optimizing key hyperparameters. Our evaluation on the newly curated AtlasOCRBench and the established KITAB-Bench demonstrates state-of-the-art performance, challenging larger models and highlighting AtlasOCR's robustness and generalization capabilities for both Darija and standard Arabic OCR tasks.