Chart Understanding

Chart understanding studies how AI can interpret visualizations, from reading axes, legends, and plotted values to answering questions, comparing charts, and summarizing findings. Common approaches combine vision-language models with OCR, structured chart representations, visual grounding, and tools such as code execution; training often uses synthetic charts alongside real examples. Benchmarks increasingly test not only question answering but also data extraction, chart editing, dynamic interactions, and specialized settings such as scientific and financial figures. Models have improved, but reliable numerical reading, evidence-grounded reasoning, and robustness to dense or unfamiliar charts remain open challenges.