mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaboration

TL;DR

mPLUG-Owl2 is a versatile multi-modal large language model that leverages modality collaboration through a modular network design, achieving state-of-the-art performance in both text and multi-modal tasks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel modular architecture with shared and modality-adaptive modules, pioneering the use of modality collaboration in both pure-text and multi-modal scenarios.

Findings

Achieves state-of-the-art results on multiple benchmarks.

Demonstrates effective modality collaboration in both text and multi-modal tasks.

First model to show modality collaboration phenomenon across different scenarios.

Abstract

Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated impressive instruction abilities across various open-ended tasks. However, previous methods primarily focus on enhancing multi-modal capabilities. In this work, we introduce a versatile multi-modal large language model, mPLUG-Owl2, which effectively leverages modality collaboration to improve performance in both text and multi-modal tasks. mPLUG-Owl2 utilizes a modularized network design, with the language decoder acting as a universal interface for managing different modalities. Specifically, mPLUG-Owl2 incorporates shared functional modules to facilitate modality collaboration and introduces a modality-adaptive module that preserves modality-specific features. Extensive experiments reveal that mPLUG-Owl2 is capable of generalizing both text tasks and multi-modal tasks and achieving state-of-the-art performances with a single generic model. Notably, mPLUG-Owl2 is the first MLLM model that demonstrates the modality collaboration phenomenon in both pure-text and multi-modal scenarios, setting a pioneering path in the development of future multi-modal foundation models.