What Do You Mean by Multimodal AI?

Before the dawn of advanced AI, the concept of human-like chatbots, code-generating models like ChatGPT, and sentiment analysis tools belonged solely to the realm of science fiction. However, these capacities are now a palpable reality, and we are actively involved in this transformative era.

With the growing market and industry penetration, AI is shattering the standard norms and redefining its use cases. Multimodal AI  represents a paradigm shift in AI, unlocking unprecedented potential for interaction between machines and the real world.  

By incorporating different types of models and data, Multipmodel AI aims to fine-tune the exactness, creativity, and generation abilities of standard AI. It is where technology and creativity merge, enabling machines to be more precise while solving the complex issues that surround us. 

Even though it’s in its babyhood stage, Multimodal AI has already set its course and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 36.2% by 2030 and reach a value of US $ 105.50 billion. This speaks volumes about how significant multimodal AI will become in the future.  

The way we see it, multimodal AI is going to overcome certain limitations of AI and break the barriers. From identifying emotions to doing accurate image identification, it’s going to open new opportunities.

This multimodal AI guide comes in handy when you need to learn about: 

1. Multimodal AI meaning
2. How it works 
3. Multimodel AI use cases 
4. Why consider investing in multimodal AI development 

Must Read: What are AI Agents? How To Build an AI Agent For Your Business?

What is Multimodal AI?

Multimodal AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can process information from multiple sources, like text, images, speech, and even sensor data. It's kind of like how we understand the world around us by combining information from our senses.. 

The training data is disjoined, collected using sensors, and processed with the help of neural network topologies, resulting in more accurate predictions. 

Do you remember the text-based spam filters that relied only on text analysis for detecting spam emails? They used to identify spam emails based on keywords, blacklists of known spam sender addresses, and patterns in the writing style. However, they failed to catch the spamming links, hidden texts, and images, resulting in a successful scam. This is a classic example of the limitations of traditional AI, where one type of data modality is used.

Through the use of multimodal AI, today's spam filters are much more refined and can pinpoint spam based on unusual phrasing, sentiment analysis of the content (e.g., overly promotional language), and stylistic inconsistencies.

This is possible because of the variety of data used during the training of such advanced spam detectors. This approach lets the machine have a more holistic understanding of a given problem and working environment. When multiple modalities are used for the training, machines are likely to develop better contextual reasoning ability and mitigate biases that might take place due to the use of individual data types. 

The use of multimodal learning in AI is paving the path for the development of more responsive and favorably intelligent machines. Businesses across the industries have begun using multimodel AI-based solutions to improve key workflow. 

For instance, Google Lens and Amazon Style Snap integrate image recognition with user purchase history and search behavior to deliver personalized suggestions.

Similarly, social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have deployed multimodal AI-based content detector tools to analyze text, images, and potentially even audio in videos to notice harmful content.

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Multimodal vs. Unimodal AI Models

Unimodal AI is still used at large and is certainly a step behind the multimodal AI models. Here is how these two are different from each other. 

1. Unimodel AI uses only one type of data at a time, either text or image, to train the machine whereas multiple-mode AI uses a wide range of data, including text, audio, image, videos, etc. for the training. 
2. Because of the limited data used, the contextual understanding of unimodal AI is limited. Multi-Model AI has a richer contextual understanding, developed using various data points. 
3. Training machines with unimodal  AI is easy and quick whereas training is very comprehensive and demands extra effort with the use of multimodal AI. 
4. Unimodel AI requires limited domain-specific data for training. Multimodal AI is more demanding at this part. You need to feed machines with mammoth data, collected from different sources. 
5. As only one type of data is used for the training, machines, built using unimodal AI, are more susceptible to biases. Multimodal AI machines can potentially mitigate bias through diverse data sources. 
6. Unimodel AI systems can only work for one type of task at a time whereas multimodal AI systems are capable of performing different tasks simultaneously. 

Technologies Powering Multimodal AI

The kind of data understanding, prediction accuracy, and contextual awareness multimodal AI has is not the result of a single technology. Multiple AI technologies play their key parts in empowering multimodal AI. Below listed are the most crucial technologies empowering the functions of multimodal AI. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

NLP is one of the most pivotal technologies for multimodal AI as it bridges between human language and the other modalities involved. You can consider NLP as the ‘translator’ for multimodal AI as it enables the model to: 

1. Extract meaning from textual and human language through speech recognition. 
2. Generate a text description of what the model has received for better human-machine interaction. 
3. Understand the context of the surrounding information and establish a reasoned approach in different modalities. 
4. Fuse different sorts of information extracted from text with data from other modalities to create a more comprehensive understanding.

Deep Learning

Deep learning, a subfield of AI, is the backbone of multimodal AI. It uses artificial neural networks, similar to neurons present in the human brain, with representation learning to learn and make predictions for complex problems. What makes it special for machine learning is its ability to use raw data for learning without any manual feature engineering. It can use labeled or unlabeled data for machine learning. 

Must Read: What is Deep Learning? 

Deep learning in multimodal AI is crucial for extracting meaningful features from different modalities used, learning complex data representations, and performing well on unseen data that wasn't part of the original training set.

Computer Vision

Computer vision is the eyes of multimodal AI as it enables multimodal AI systems to understand the visual world by collecting various types of visual data. With its help, multimodal AI can identify an object, image, or video in the present and make predictions in the future. In addition, computer vision is also used to establish the spatial relationships between objects and the environment. 

If you’re planning to develop AI agents that can identify the objects in its path or recognize a person through its facial expression then computer vision is a crucial technology to establish this learning. 

Audio Processing

Audio processing is another widely used machine learning technology where different types of audio signals are used to establish an understanding. It’s a pivotal technology to perform tasks such as speech recognition, music data retrieval, and audio denoising. 

Audio processing technology enables multimodal AI to extract crucial information from sound data and integrate it into other data types, resulting in richer contextual understanding. 

Multimodel AI systems used for real-time sentiment analysis, video generation, and virtual assistance heavily depend on audio processing technology to analyze the tones, pitch, and speech used in the audio data. 

Along with these essential technologies, multimodal AI also needs the help of multiple technologies such as data fusion technologies, big data management, data integration systems, and HPCs to conduct their operations successfully. 

Applications of Multimodal AI

Multimodel AI applications are vast, offering a multitude of innovation possibilities across industries. 

Gesture Recognition

Multimodel AI is very useful to do accurate gesture recognition by successfully translating sign language into a conclusion in the form of a text or a speech. Through these abilities, multimodal AI is allowing industries such as automotive, healthcare & rehabilitation, and retail to promote inclusive communication and reduce gaps. 

Video Summarization 

Modern multimodal modals are widely used for video summarization-related tasks. They can help a machine to extract crucial information for a given video and create crisp summaries in the form of text or audio. 

Industries like education and healthcare can design multimodal AI solutions for summarizing video-based learning content and transcriptions respectively. 

Content Moderation Systems 

Multimodal AI can lead to the development of  highly responsive content moderation systems that can analyze vast data to flag inappropriate content. Instead of only text, multimodal models can let the content moderation tools spot abusing content present in videos, images, and audio. 

Social media platforms, online forums, discussion boards, gaming communities, e-commerce, and other related domains can use multimodal models to establish a safer online ecosystem. 

Robotic Process Automation or RPA

Multimodal models can help RPA to have a better contextual understanding of a specific environment. It allows RPAs to use visual and sensor data to understand their environment a little better. Through the use of technologies such as computer vision, audio processing, and NLP, multimodal models will ensure that the designed robots can execute the given tasks with full accuracy.

Augmented Reality (AR) Applications

Multimodal AI is an ideal resource to use when you want to improve the  AR solutions you offer. These models can promote the development of AR solutions that can interact with the environment and user more realistically.

Multimodal AI can leverage various sensors (camera, LiDAR, depth sensors) to create a more comprehensive understanding of the user's environment. This allows AR overlays to be more anchored, accurate, and interactive. 

Visual Question Answering or VQA 

When combined with NLP and computer vision, multimodal models can lead to the development of a highly accurate Visual Question Answering system that can understand and answer questions about images in a more human-like way. 

These systems can leverage the context provided by both the question and the image, leading to more accurate and nuanced answers.

Emotion Detection and Analysis

Multimodal models are capable of combining audio analysis with facial expression recognition, leading to more nuanced emotional understanding. In addition, they can even take speech tones and vocal cues into consideration while forming a response, resulting in better picturization of emotional state. 

Text-to-Image Generation

Multimodal models are already empowering text-to-image generation activities in real-time and DALL-E is the best example of it. This is a multimodal AI of GPT-3, trained over a massive database of different modalities, and is capable of generating a series of images based on the input text. 

Virtual Assistants

Multimodal AI helps to understand and respond to voice commands while processing visual data for a comprehensive user interaction. They assist in voice-controlled devices, digital personal assistants, and smart home automation.

Must Read: AI Agents in Customer Service

Image Captioning and Image Search

By combining computer vision and NLP, multimodal AI can indeed objects, actions, and relationships between different images in a more fitting manner, resulting in highly accurate image captioning and search activities. 

Fraud Detection and Risk Assessment

Through means like grasping the content of a transaction request, voice pattern, and user behavior, multimodal AI can lead to accurate and quick fraud detection and risk assessment. 

Anomaly Detection and Predictive Maintenance

The application of multimodal AI in the field of anomaly detection promotes highly responsive early warning systems. Multimodal AI can analyze sensor data from machines alongside other data sources (maintenance logs, operating conditions) to detect anomalies before they become a headache for you. 

Early detection also leads to identifying signs of wear & tear before they become a potential threat and lead to major operational failure, improving the rate of predictive maintenance. 

Personalized Learning 

Education education has a great scope to leverage multimodal AI to personalize the entire learning experience. These models can analyze speech, facial experience, and learning outcomes of the learners and create learning material to fit individual needs. 
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Benefits of Multimodal AI Models

Even though multimodal AI development can take a toll and demand heavy data, progressive businesses have started investing in it because of the umpteen benefits. 

Superlative Contextual Understanding 

The most evident benefit of multimodal AI is its great contextual understanding, which was missed in unimodal models. Multimodal AI can understand the meaning of a context completely, resulting in accurate predictions. This is possible because of the use of different types of modalities that help multimodal models to get maximum cues about a context. 

For instance, an image captioning multimodal-based tool will refer to both the text on the image and visual data to make accurate image descriptions. 

Reduced Bias 

Traditional models trained on single data types can inherit biases present in that data. On the other hand, multimodal models easily mitigate bias by incorporating diverse data sources. 

Greater Generalizability

As a wide range of data is used for the training of multimodal models, they are more likely to perform well on unseen data that wasn't part of the training set. This leads to greater generalizability and makes them more adaptable to real-world scenarios with variations not encountered during training.

Natural Interaction

By combining multiple input forms such as text, visual, speech, and visual cues, multimodal models tend to have a better understanding of what a user wants. Through this in-depth understanding, these models will be able to interact with real-time users more naturally and conversationally. 

Enhanced Accuracy 

Through the use of different modalities, multimodal models can reduce the noises, mistakes, and irrelevant incidences while generating a response. When a machine is learning how data looks, sounds, and behaves, it will have a more nuanced understanding of the input data, resulting in better and more accurate predictions. 

Reduced Ambiguity 

Using only one type of data, say only image or text, it’s very difficult for a machine to learn the key intent or the message that data is trying to convey. This half-baked understanding of input data leads to ambiguous interpretations. 

Multimodal AI fixes this problem by using multiple modalities to establish an understanding of input data. Hence, the predictions have fewer ambiguities and more dependability. 

Effective Handling or Noisy or Incomplete Data 

If multimodal AI is fed with noisy or incomplete data then it leverages its multiple modalities. It shifts its focus from noisy data to data offering reliable information. This way, multimodal AI will be able to establish a robust prevention of the real world even when imperfect input data is used.
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Multimodal AI Use Cases

Opportunities are endless when it comes to multimodal AI use cases because this field of AI has revolutionized machine learning in unimaginable ways. Have a look at some of the most famous use cases of multimodal AI. 

Automotive Industry

The demand for self-driving vehicles is likely to grow at a CAGR of 35% during 2022-2032 and reach USD 2,353.93  billion by 2032. 

Multimodal AI can help leading players in the automotive industry to be part of this trend while reducing potential challenges such as high accident rates, wrong signal interpretation, etc.

They can use multimodal models to design modern ADAS systems that can perform object detection precisely. These systems can combine different types of sensor data to react quickly to sudden acts such as lane changes, objects on the road, etc. 

It can even help in monitoring the driver’s performance by analyzing eye movements, voice commands, and facial experience. Using this data, the automotive industry can design highly responsive driver alert systems that can detect driver drowsiness, sleep fatigue, or distraction effectively. 

Healthcare and Pharma

Misdiagnosis leads to the death or serious health issues in 795,000 US citizens. Wrong or delayed diagnosis is crippling the healthcare & pharma industry slowly and certainly. 

The integration of multimodal models for AI development for the healthcare industry can enhance medical diagnosis by spotting subtle abnormalities in X-rays, CT Scans, and other imaging resorts. By combining scanned visual modality with past medical history, multimodal AI can even recommend more targeted diagnostic tests.

Other potential multimodal AI use cases for the healthcare & pharma industry are personalized treatment plans, improved patient monitoring, and expedient drug discovery. 

Media and Entertainment

Imagine a world where your favorite streaming service doesn't just suggest shows – it curates an entire entertainment experience tailored just for you. This personalized approach is the power of multimodal AI in the media and entertainment industry. 

Multimodal models empower this industry to learn what kind of content a specific individual watches, analyze how an audience engages with the audio, and even how an audience engages with the platform. 

Based on these modalities, multimodal systems enable the media & entertainment industry to make more personalized recommendations that align not just with past viewing history but also with the emotional state. 

Retail

Imagine AI analyzing your browsing history, past purchases, and even in-store behavior (through cameras) to suggest products you'd genuinely love.

This is not fiction; but the walking reality of multimodal AI development for the retail industry. Amazon Go is already using multimodal AI to eliminate traditional checkouts in the stores. It uses cameras and sensors to track customer movements within the store and automatically bill them for items they pick up. There is no need to stand in the line for billing. 

Sephora’s Virtual Artist and Adidas Fitting Rooms are two more very common examples of multimodal models revolutionizing the retail industry. 

The possibilities of multimodal AI integration are endless in the retail domain. From analyzing the sentiments behind a purchase to personalizing the entire buying experience, multimodal AI systems are empowering the retail industry in multiple ways.

Multimodal AI can even help this industry to set up highly interactive kiosks that allow customers to search for products, or check availability, based on their location within the store.

They can help retail businesses gain deeper insights into key sales data, customer behavior patterns, and even weather forecasts to predict demand and optimize inventory levels. This is a game changer when it comes to reducing the incidences of stockouts and overstocking, leading to improved cash flow and profitability.

This industry can also have inventory and stock management AI agents, built using multimodal AI, to identify empty shelves and restock them efficiently. This frees up human employees for higher-value tasks and ensures shelves are always well-stocked.

Must Read:  What are AI Agents? How To Build an AI Agent For Your Business?

Manufacturing

Other than their quality service offerings, there is one more thing common in Rolls-Royce, Siemens, and Bosch. They all are using multimodal AI to increase accuracy in predictive maintenance, production optimization, and production inspection. 

Multimodal AI can help manufacturers to have solutions that can do more accurate defect detection at multiple levels. Computer vision technology can identify surface defects while the temperature sensors might detect overheating components. By combining this data, manufacturers can achieve a more comprehensive picture of product quality.

They can even review historical maintenance records and avoid failures before they even take place. Multimodal modal-based AI tools can review the production data in real-time and spot intentional or unreasonable delays, resulting in highly optimized production. 

Additionally, the manufacturing industry can do remote production monitoring, establish a safer work environment, and even improve task delegations with the help of AI agents, built using multimodal models. 

What does Ampcome’s Multimodal Model Development Service Entail?

Undoubtedly, using multimodal AI will help modern-day businesses gain an edge in the market by being more accurate, data-driven, and responsive. Through the use of this AI technology, businesses have a chance to analyze vast data from various sources, personalize machine-business interactions, and free up human resources by automating mundane jobs. 

Ampcome's AI development services is a game-changer for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve. We can help you design, develop, and deploy cutting-edge multimodal AI solutions to integrate automation, higher work efficiencies, and streamlined workflows.

We go beyond traditional, text-based AI while developing multimodal AI solutions. We deploy advanced AI technologies such as deep learning, natural language processing, AutoGen, Computer Vision, and many more to craft applications with superlative capabilities. 

From collecting data for model training to deploying strict cyber security protocols, our team of AI developers is ready to take care of everything that falls under the category of multimodal AI development. 

Are you ready to unlock the power of multimodal AI and use it to touch new operational highs? 

Contact Ampcome today to discuss your specific needs and get a free consultation.