LLM Reference

Kosmos-2 Models by Microsoft Research

Microsoft ResearchMITOpen source
1 model2023Up to 2k ctx

Last refreshed 2026-05-19. Next refresh: weekly.

Details

LicenseMITOSI-approved
Commercial useCommercial use: permitted
Models1
Released2023
Max context2k

About

The Kosmos-2 family of large language models (LLMs) is a significant advancement in the realm of multimodal AI, particularly noted for its ability to ground language understanding in real-world contexts. These models effectively integrate visual and textual information, excelling in tasks that involve perceiving object descriptions, such as identifying bounding boxes, and aligning textual data with visual content. Utilizing a Transformer-based architecture, Kosmos-2 is trained on a substantial dataset of grounded image-text pairs, enabling it to perform a range of tasks, including multimodal grounding, referring expression comprehension, and general language understanding and generation. Noteworthy is its innovative approach of representing referential expressions as Markdown links, which enhances the precision of visual-textual alignment. This positions the Kosmos-2 family as a vital bridge between language and multimodal perception, with its models like kosmos-2-patch14-224 available on Hugging Face, facilitating developments in areas such as image captioning and visual question answering.

Decision facts

Best fit
General model comparison
Capability starting point
Kosmos 2 with 2k context
Lowest tracked input
Not tracked
Closest related family
Harrier

Archived Variants

Use-when guidance is based on each model's tracked capabilities, context window, release date, and replacement status.

1 in view1 retired
Kosmos 2Archived

Keep only for existing workloads; choose a current variant for new builds.

2023-032k context1.7B parameters

Release Timeline

1 release group
2023-03
1 retired
Kosmos 2
2k context1.7B parameters
Archived

Specifications(1 models)

Kosmos-2 model specifications comparison
ModelReleasedContextParameters
Kosmos 22023-032k1.66B

Available From(1 provider)