{
  "definition": "A retrieval approach in which queries and documents are independently encoded into fine-grained representations and their interactions are computed at query time rather than fully collapsed into a single vector beforehand.",
  "derivedRelations": [
    {
      "target": "colbert",
      "type": "realizedBy"
    },
    {
      "target": "colbertv2",
      "type": "realizedBy"
    }
  ],
  "id": "late-interaction",
  "kind": "Representation",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/",
  "modifiedAt": "2026-09-12T21:39:00Z",
  "prefLabel": "Late Interaction",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "Searchplex",
    "url": "https://searchplex.net/"
  },
  "relations": [
    {
      "note": "Multi-vector retrieval describes using multiple vectors per item; late interaction describes computing fine-grained interactions at query time.",
      "target": "multi-vector-retrieval",
      "type": "notEquivalentTo"
    },
    {
      "target": "maxsim",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "multi-vector-retrieval",
      "type": "related"
    },
    {
      "target": "plaid",
      "type": "related"
    }
  ],
  "representations": {
    "html": "https://id.searchplex.net/late-interaction/",
    "json": "https://id.searchplex.net/late-interaction.json",
    "jsonld": "https://id.searchplex.net/late-interaction.jsonld"
  },
  "scheme": "https://id.searchplex.net/scheme/",
  "scopeNote": "ColBERT popularized token-level late interaction for neural retrieval. Late interaction is a retrieval paradigm rather than a specific model.",
  "status": "published",
  "uri": "https://id.searchplex.net/late-interaction/"
}