Last updated: April 5, 2026 · Core Concepts · by Daniel Ashford
What is Multimodal?
LLMs that can process not just text, but also images, audio, and video.
Definition
Multimodal refers to models that can process multiple types of data — text, images, audio, video. A multimodal model can understand an image and answer questions about it, transcribe audio, or generate images from text.
How It Works
Most frontier models in 2026 are multimodal: GPT-4o processes text, images, and audio. Gemini 2.5 Ultra handles text, images, audio, and video. Claude accepts text and images. Vision quality varies significantly between models.
Example
You can send a photo of a restaurant receipt to GPT-4o and ask it to extract items, prices, and tip into structured JSON.
Related Terms
See How Models Compare
Understanding multimodal is important when choosing the right AI model. See how 12 models compare on our leaderboard.