(Almost) Free Modality Stitching of Foundation Models

Foundation multi-modal models are often designed by stitching of multiple existing pretrained uni-modal models: for example, an image classifier with a text model. This stitching process is performed by training a connector module that aims to align the representation spaces of these uni-modal models towards a multi-modal objective. However, given the complexity of training such connectors on large scale web-based datasets coupled with the ever-increasing number of available pretrained uni-modal models, the task of unimodal models selection and subsequent connector module training becomes computationally demanding. To address this under-studied critical problem, we propose Hypernetwork Model Alignment (HYMA), a novel all-in-one solution for optimal uni-modal model selection and connector training by leveraging hypernetworks. Specifically, our framework utilizes the parameter prediction capability of a hypernetwork to obtain jointly trained connector modules for N × M combinations of uni-modal models. In our experiments, HYMA reduces the cost of searching for the best performing uni-modal model pair by 10×, while matching the ranking and trained connector performance obtained via grid search across a suite of diverse multi-modal benchmarks.