| title | From Fragmentation to Fusion: A Survey and Roadmap for Omnimodal Embeddings |
|---|---|
| authors | Ziyin Zhang, Yuyu Guo, Ying Zhang, Siqiao Xue, Zihan Liao, Jin Qin, Wenjie Yang, Siyuan Yang, Shijie Li, Cheng Chen, Hao Wu, Zhaoyang Zhu, Ruipeng Li, Zhaokun Jiang, Lei Lei, Rui Wang, Hang Yu, Rui Wang |
| date | 2026-10-30 |
| venue | arXiv (preprint, not peer reviewed) |
| id | arXiv:2611.00172 |
| affiliation | CodeFuse AI |
| upvotes | 22 (Hugging Face Daily Papers, 2026-11-04) |
| links | abs pdf hf code |
| cite | |
| abstract | Embedding models underpin virtually every modern AI system, from search engines to recommendation systems. Despite shared mathematical foundations, research on embedding models remains fragmented by modality: the communities develop largely in isolation, seldom exchanging insights. We argue that this fragmentation obscures a deeper convergence. Driven by contrastive learning, Transformer architectures, and a granularity shift, embedding research across modalities is converging toward a common set of principles, even as modality-specific challenges remain underexplored. To reason across this convergence without conflating it, we propose a framework of three progressively harder capabilities: coverage, comparability, and compositionality. Three paths toward unification satisfy these in turn: transformation broadens coverage, alignment enables comparability, and joint embedding, the terminus we advocate, aims at compositionality. This position paper traces the resulting evolution, providing the first unified, cross-cutting treatment of omnimodal embedding research. |
bibtex
@misc{zhang2026from,
title={From Fragmentation to Fusion: A Survey and Roadmap for Omnimodal Embeddings},
author={Ziyin Zhang and Yuyu Guo and Ying Zhang and Siqiao Xue and Zihan Liao and Jin Qin and Wenjie Yang and Siyuan Yang and Shijie Li and Cheng Chen and Hao Wu and Zhaoyang Zhu and Ruipeng Li and Zhaokun Jiang and Lei Lei and Rui Wang and Hang Yu and Rui Wang},
year={2026},
eprint={2611.00172},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00172}
}