---
title: The Real Problem of Multimodality
seo_title: The Real Problem of Multimodality — video
description: What it means to integrate text, images, audio and other modalities, and how perception, alignment, reasoning, generation and action fit together.
keywords: multimodal AI, multimodal systems, multimodal LLM, text image audio AI, multimodal perception, multimodal generative AI, GPT-4V, Gemini multimodal
date: '2026-04-01T00:00:00+00:00'
robots: index,follow,max-snippet:-1,max-image-preview:large,max-video-preview:-1
hide:
- toc
- navigation
video_watch_page: true
---


<div class="s5-video-watch" data-s5-video-watch data-video-id="videos-series-multimodalidad-iag-01-el-problema-md">
  <header class="s5-video-watch__header">
    <div class="s5-video-watch__crumbs"><a href="https://5sigmas.com/en/videos/">All videos</a><span>Multimodality</span><span>1:02</span></div>
    <h1>The Real Problem of Multimodality</h1><p>What it means to integrate text, images, audio and other modalities, and how perception, alignment, reasoning, generation and action fit together.</p>
  </header>
  <div class="s5-video-watch__player">
    <video controls crossorigin="anonymous" preload="metadata" poster="/en/series/multimodalidad-iag/01-el-problema.jpg" playsinline data-s5-watch-player><source src="/en/series/multimodalidad-iag/01-el-problema.mp4" type="video/mp4">Your browser does not support the video element.</video>
    <p>Links containing <code>?t=</code> open the video at a specific second.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="s5-video-watch__summary" aria-labelledby="video-summary-title">
    <div class="s5-video-watch__section-head"><span class="s5-eyebrow">Video summary</span><h2 id="video-summary-title">The ideas to retain</h2></div>
    <div class="s5-video-watch__snippet-grid"><article><span>01</span><h2>1. A modality is not only an input type</h2><p>We call a modality a distinct way of encoding information about the world. Text is a discrete sequence of symbols, an image has spatial structure, audio adds temporal continuity, tone,…</p></article>
<article><span>02</span><h2>2. The problem is not adding modalities, but crossing them without destroying them</h2><p>A system can accept an image and still remain deeply text-centric: it only has to turn the image into a caption and do everything else over that caption.</p></article>
<article><span>03</span><h2>3. The shared space matters, but it is not the only possible architecture</h2><p>The most common version of an introduction to multimodality treats the shared representation space almost as the essence of the entire field.</p></article></div>
  </section>
  
  
  <aside class="s5-video-watch__source"><div><span class="s5-eyebrow">Context and evidence</span><h2>Continue with the full article</h2><p>The chapter develops the mechanism, primary sources, limitations and connections to the rest of the series.</p></div><a class="s5-video-watch__source-link" href="https://5sigmas.com/en/series/multimodalidad-iag/01-el-problema/">Read the article →</a></aside>
  <section class="s5-video-watch__related" aria-labelledby="related-videos-title"><div class="s5-video-watch__section-head"><span class="s5-eyebrow">Next step</span><h2 id="related-videos-title">Related videos</h2></div><div class="s5-video-watch__related-grid"><article><a href="https://5sigmas.com/en/videos/series/multimodalidad-iag/05-riesgos/"><img src="https://5sigmas.com/en/series/multimodalidad-iag/05-riesgos.jpg" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1280" height="720"><span>Multimodality · 1:02</span><strong>Risks of Multimodal AI Systems</strong></a></article>
<article><a href="https://5sigmas.com/en/videos/series/multimodalidad-iag/04-evaluacion/"><img src="https://5sigmas.com/en/series/multimodalidad-iag/04-evaluacion.jpg" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1280" height="720"><span>Multimodality · 1:02</span><strong>Evaluating Multimodal Systems</strong></a></article>
<article><a href="https://5sigmas.com/en/videos/series/multimodalidad-iag/03-arquitecturas/"><img src="https://5sigmas.com/en/series/multimodalidad-iag/03-arquitecturas.jpg" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1280" height="720"><span>Multimodality · 1:02</span><strong>Multimodal System Architectures</strong></a></article></div></section>
</div>