Mind the Gap: A Generalized Approach for Cross-Modal Embedding Alignment

Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems enhance text generation by incorporating external knowledge but often struggle when retrieving context across different text modalities due to semantic gaps. We introduce a generalized projection-based method, inspired by adapter modules in transfer learning, that efficiently bridges these gaps between various text types, such as programming code and pseudocode, or English and French sentences. Our approach emphasizes speed, accuracy, and data efficiency, requiring minimal resources for training and inference. By aligning embeddings from heterogeneous text modalities into a unified space through a lightweight projection network, our model significantly outperforms traditional retrieval methods like the Okapi BM25 algorithm and models like Dense Passage Retrieval (DPR), while approaching the accuracy of Sentence Transformers. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness and generalizability of our method across different tasks, highlighting its potential for real-time, resource-constrained applications.