AI glossary
What is multimodal AI?
Multimodal AI is AI that can understand or create more than one kind of data, such as text, images, audio and video, in the same conversation. You can show it a photo and ask a question about it, or speak to it and get a spoken reply.
How does multimodal AI work?
Each type of input is turned into representations the model can combine, so it can reason across them, for example reading the text in a photo and answering in words.
Why does multimodal AI matter?
It makes AI useful for real-world tasks that aren't just text, from reading receipts to explaining diagrams.
An example
Example: You photograph an electricity bill and ask the AI why this month's amount is higher, and it reads the units from the image.
Related terms
Learn it properly
Multimodal AI is covered in AI Foundations, with short lessons, practice questions and instant feedback.