Practical overview
When it fits
Use Lisa when a visual task calls for a segmentation mask selected through a natural-language question or contextual description, and when local model inference or experimentation is relevant.
Who it is for
- Developers exploring language-guided image segmentation and multimodal reasoning.
- Researchers or practitioners who want to run the documented inference workflow with a LISA model.
- Teams investigating training or adapting a segmentation assistant using the listed datasets.
Documented uses
- Ask a question about an image and request a mask for the relevant person, object, or region.
- Describe a target using a property or contextual relationship rather than only an object label.
- Run the supplied inference script with a prompt and image path to generate a masked-image result.
- Prepare a separate training workflow using the dataset categories listed in the README.
Requirements & limits
The repository is public and lists an Apache-2.0 license. The project page links to online demo deployments and documents local inference; the README does not specify account or pricing requirements.
- The documented local inference route uses CUDA and provides GPU memory estimates for the 13B model.
- The README offers 16-bit, 8-bit, and 4-bit inference options, with reduced generation quality noted for lower-bit loading.
- Inference and local deployment are separate documented workflows, using chat.py and app.py respectively.
- Training requires preparing several types of datasets, and the README says to follow the original datasets' rules.
Check current requirements in the official documentation. Source-based guidance does not mean OpenViST has run or independently tested this project.
Run local inference with a LISA 13B model
Prepare the documented environment and start the chat-based inference script with a LISA-13B-llama2-v1 model.
Before you start
- The project repository and its requirements.
- Python environment with CUDA and a GPU.
- Flash Attention installed as described in the README.
- A supported LISA-13B-llama2-v1 model version.
Steps
Install dependencies with the command below.
pip install -r requirements.txtInstall Flash Attention with the command below.
pip install flash-attn --no-build-isolationStart
chat.pywith a listed LISA-13B-llama2-v1 model version and choose the documented precision or quantized loading option.Enter a text prompt and the image path when prompted.
Expected outcome
The inference workflow produces a response to the prompt and can save a masked-image result.
Guide limitations
- The README estimates 30 GB of VRAM for 16-bit inference, 16 GB for 8-bit, and 9 GB for 4-bit with the 13B model; lower-bit loading may reduce generation quality.
- The documented chat script does not support the v0 models without checking out the specified legacy repository revision.
Sources & review
Source record details
- Source availability
- Active
- Sources checked
- 13 October 2026
- Original website title
- JIA-Lab-research/LISA · Official homepage title · retained in its source language

