GPT-4 Vision Alternatives

In September 2023, OpenAI introduced the capability for GPT-4 to process image inputs, a feature that was later expanded through an API, allowing developers to create applications utilizing these abilities. This development is part of a broader trend in the field of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs), which are designed to process various types of data, such as text and images. The blog post explores alternatives to GPT-4 with Vision, including models like LLaVA, BakLLaVA, Qwen-VL, and CogVLM, as well as fine-tuned computer vision models. Each of these alternatives offers unique strengths and weaknesses, with open-source options providing more flexibility and control. The ability to perform tasks such as Visual Question Answering (VQA) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a common feature among these models. The post highlights the rapid advancement in multimodal models and suggests that we can expect continuous innovation and new releases in the coming years.