Multimodal AI refers to AI models that process and generate multiple content types (text, images, audio, video, 3D, code) within a single system. The 2023-2026 period saw the rapid emergence of true multimodal foundation models (GPT-4o, GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Llama 4) that match or exceed single-modal specialist models while enabling applications that require cross-modal reasoning impossible with text-only systems. It's where AI is heading: not separate specialized models, but unified systems that handle everything.
The modalities:
Text: original LLM territory; the modality every modern foundation model handles.
Images: input (vision) and output (generation). GPT-4o, GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro,...