LLaVA-Critic: Learning to Evaluate Multimodal Models

Tianyi Xiong, Xiyao Wang, Dong Guo, Qinghao Ye, Haoqi Fan, Quanquan Gu, Heng Huang, Chunyuan Li; Proceedings of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR), 2025, pp. 13618-13628

We introduce LLaVA-Critic, the first open-source large multimodal model (LMM) designed as a generalist evaluator to assess performance across a wide range of multimodal tasks. LLaVA-Critic is trained using a high-quality critic instruction-following dataset that incorporates diverse evaluation criteria and scenarios. Our experiments demonstrate the model's effectiveness in two key areas: (i) LMM-as-a-Judge, where LLaVA-Critic provides reliable evaluation scores, performing on par with or surpassing GPT models on multiple evaluation benchmarks; and (ii) Preference Learning, where it generates reward signals for preference learning, enhancing model alignment capabilities. This work underscores the potential of open-source LMMs in self-critique and evaluation, setting the stage for future research into scalable, superhuman alignment feedback mechanisms for LMMs.