Towards deployment-centric multimodal AI beyond vision and language
Xianyuan Liu, Jiayang Zhang, Shuo Zhou, Thijs L. van der Plas, Avish Vijayaraghavan, Anastasiia Grishina, Mengdie Zhuang, Daniel Schofield, Christopher Tomlinson, Yuhan Wang, Ruizhe Li, Louisa van Zeeland, Sina Tabakhi, Cyndie Demeocq, Xiang Li, Arunav Das, Orlando Timmerman, Thomas Baldwin-McDonald, Jinge Wu, Peizhen Bai, Zahraa Al Sahili, Omnia Alwazzan, Thao N. Do, Mohammod N. I. Suvon, Angeline Wang, Lucia Cipolina-Kun, Luigi A. Moretti, Lucas Farndale, Nitisha Jain, Natalia Efremova, Yan Ge, Marta Varela, Hak-Keung Lam, Oya Celiktutan, Ben R. Evans, Alejandro Coca-Castro, Honghan Wu, Zahraa S. Abdallah, Chen Chen, Valentin Danchev, Nataliya Tkachenko, Lei Lu, Tingting Zhu, Gregory G. Slabaugh, Roger K. Moore, William K. Cheung, Peter H. Charlton, Haiping Lu
Published: 2025/4/4
Abstract
Multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) integrates diverse types of data via machine learning to improve understanding, prediction, and decision-making across disciplines such as healthcare, science, and engineering. However, most multimodal AI advances focus on models for vision and language data, while their deployability remains a key challenge. We advocate a deployment-centric workflow that incorporates deployment constraints early to reduce the likelihood of undeployable solutions, complementing data-centric and model-centric approaches. We also emphasise deeper integration across multiple levels of multimodality and multidisciplinary collaboration to significantly broaden the research scope beyond vision and language. To facilitate this approach, we identify common multimodal-AI-specific challenges shared across disciplines and examine three real-world use cases: pandemic response, self-driving car design, and climate change adaptation, drawing expertise from healthcare, social science, engineering, science, sustainability, and finance. By fostering multidisciplinary dialogue and open research practices, our community can accelerate deployment-centric development for broad societal impact.