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Predicting Zero-Shot Classification Performance for Arbitrary Queries (arxiv.org)
1 point by PaulHoule 240 days ago | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A tool estimates how well a vision-language classifier will sort images into named classes, by comparing the class names and generating fake images of the task. Adding those images to the text-only guess made the prediction more reliable, with no labeled examples.

Abstract · Will It Zero-Shot?: Predicting Zero-Shot Classification Performance For Arbitrary Queries

Vision-Language Models like CLIP create aligned embedding spaces for text and images, making it possible for anyone to build a visual classifier by simply naming the classes they want to distinguish. However, a model that works well in one domain may fail in another, and non-expert users have no straightforward way to assess whether their chosen VLM will work on their problem. We build on prior work using text-only comparisons to evaluate how well a model works for a given natural language task, and explore approaches that also generate synthetic images relevant to that task to evaluate and refine the prediction of zero-shot accuracy. We show that generated imagery to the baseline text-only scores substantially improves the quality of these predictions. Additionally, it gives a user feedback on the kinds of images that were used to make the assessment. Experiments on standard CLIP benchmark datasets demonstrate that the image-based approach helps users predict, without any labeled examples, whether a VLM will be effective for their application.

Kevin Robbins, Xiaotong Liu, Yu Wu, Le Sun, Grady McPeak, Abby Stylianou, Robert Pless
arXiv:2601.17535 · cs.CV · submitted Jan 24, 2026 · updated Jan 27, 2026
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