, and Microsoft all using the term to sell people on new AI models and services in just the past few weeks. But what is “multimodal,” and what does it mean?
“It is very safe to assume that future communication between human and machine will also be multimodal,” says Jina AI’s CEO Han Xiao in anIt’s safe to assume, indeed, as that’s precisely how other AI companies say they are approaching the technology right now. on responsible multimodaL AI development published last year. “As human perception and problem-solving in the physical world leverage multiple modalities, such multimodal systems provide an even more natural and seamless support than those operating across a single modality.”, even still, this comes up a bit short of a true multimodal AI system, as contemporary approaches still rely on some form of model fusion to handle different types of inputs and outputs.
“There is no doubt that any chief digital transformation officers or chief AI officers worth their salt will be aware of multimodal AI and are going to be thinking very carefully about what it can do for them,” says Henry Ajder, founder of Latent Space.