ITG NowHome › AI glossary › Multimodal AI
What is Multimodal AI?
Multimodal AI is AI that can work with more than one kind of input or output, like text, images, sound and video.
- Category Models
- Also called multimodal
- Updated 20 Oct 2026
Multimodal AI, explained simply
A text-only AI reads and writes words. A multimodal AI can also look at a picture or listen to audio.
That means you can show it a photo of a menu and ask what is vegetarian. Or you can speak and hear it reply.
Many modern chat apps are multimodal, so one tool can handle many kinds of tasks.
On ITG Now, our AI models page and news stories point out when a model can handle images, audio or video.
Related terms
LLMComputer visionSpeech-to-textText-to-imageAI model
Questions people ask about Multimodal AI
Is multimodal AI the same as generative AI?
No. Multimodal means it handles several kinds of data. Generative means it creates new content. A tool can be both.
What can multimodal AI do?
It can describe photos, read documents, listen to speech and answer questions about them.