ColPali is an emerging tool for PDF document retrieval using vision language models, addressing the challenges of building a strong retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) application that can extract data from multimedia documents containing images, diagrams and tables. Unlike traditional methods that rely on text-based embedding or optical character recognition (OCR) techniques, ColPali processes entire PDF pages, leveraging a visual transformer to create embeddings that account for both text and visual content. This holistic approach enables better retrieval as well as reasoning for why certain documents are retrieved, and significantly enhances RAG performance against data-rich PDFs. We've tested ColPali with several clients where it has shown promising results, but the technology is still in the early stages. It's worth assessing, particularly for organizations with complex visual document data.
