Searchplex ID Retrieval terminology registry

Representation

Late Interaction

Canonical ID https://id.searchplex.net/late-interaction/

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.

Scope

ColBERT popularized token-level late interaction for neural retrieval. Late interaction is a retrieval paradigm rather than a specific model.

Realized by

Related

Not equivalent to

  • Late Interaction is not ColBERT. ColBERT is a model family that popularized late interaction; late interaction is the broader retrieval approach.
  • Late Interaction is not Multi-Vector Retrieval. Multi-vector retrieval describes using multiple vectors per item; late interaction describes computing fine-grained interactions at query time.

ID