Less is More: A Simple yet Effective Token Reduction Method for Efficient Multi-modal LLMs
Dingjie Song, Wenjun Wang, Shunian Chen, Xidong Wang, Michael X. Guan, Benyou Wang
Abstract
The rapid advancement of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) has led to remarkable performances across various domains. However, this progress is accompanied by a substantial surge in the resource consumption of these models. We address this pressing issue by introducing a new approach, Token Reduction using CLIP Metric (TRIM), aimed at improving the efficiency of MLLMs without sacrificing their performance. Inspired by human attention patterns in Visual Question Answering (VQA) tasks, TRIM presents a fresh perspective on the selection and reduction of image tokens. The TRIM method has been extensively tested across 12 datasets, and the results demonstrate a significant reduction in computational overhead while maintaining a consistent level of performance. This research marks a critical stride in efficient MLLM development, promoting greater accessibility and sustainability of high-performing models.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{song-etal-2025-less,
title = "Less is More: A Simple yet Effective Token Reduction Method for Efficient Multi-modal {LLM}s",
author = "Song, Dingjie and
Wang, Wenjun and
Chen, Shunian and
Wang, Xidong and
Guan, Michael X. and
Wang, Benyou",
editor = "Rambow, Owen and
Wanner, Leo and
Apidianaki, Marianna and
Al-Khalifa, Hend and
Eugenio, Barbara Di and
Schockaert, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
month = jan,
year = "2025",
address = "Abu Dhabi, UAE",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.508/",
pages = "7614--7623"
}