In a bold move within the competitive AI landscape, ByteDance's Seed team introduced Seed1.5-VL, its latest multimodal large model, on May 13. Designed to advance agent technology, this innovation arrives just as Google flexes its muscles with Gemini 2.5 Pro.

Trained on over 3 trillion tokens of multimodal data, Seed1.5-VL boasts robust understanding and reasoning capabilities while slashing inference costs—a crucial advantage for real-world applications. When stacked against Google's offering, which leads GPT-4.0 in multiple benchmarks, ByteDance's creation holds its ground impressively.

Performance that turns heads Despite operating with just 20 billion activated parameters, Seed1.5-VL achieved state-of-the-art results in 38 of 60 public benchmarks. It dominated video evaluations (14/19 wins) and GUI agent tasks (3/7 victories), proving that efficiency doesn't require sacrificing capability.

The model shines in visual reasoning, image Q&A, and video comprehension. Its streamlined architecture enables smooth operation across devices—from desktops to smartphones—handling complex information processing with surprising agility.

Room for growth remains Like any emerging technology, challenges persist. The model occasionally stumbles when counting objects or interpreting complex spatial relationships, particularly with irregular arrangements or occluded items. High-level reasoning tasks sometimes yield incomplete responses, revealing areas needing refinement.

Already available via API on Volcano Engine, Seed1.5-VL represents ByteDance's growing prowess in multimodal AI. As developers begin experimenting with this technology, one question lingers: How quickly can these remaining limitations be overcome?

Key Points

1. Seed1.5-VL matches Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro in performance despite smaller size
2. Achieved top scores in 38 of 60 benchmark tests including video analysis
3. Reduced computational requirements enable broader device compatibility
4. Struggles persist with fine-grained visual perception tasks
5. Now accessible through ByteDance's Volcano Engine platform