
PhysCount: Do MLLMs Count Visual Appearances or Physical Entities?
PhysCount is a benchmark of 546 real-world images and 4,595 human-written questions in 651 target-specific groups. It tests whether multimodal LLMs can separate visible appearances (direct view, reflections, glass) from the physical entities behind them. Across 40 MLLMs, counting appearances is much easier than linking them to entities, and the best model answers every question correctly in only 13.36% of groups.
evals, multimodal, researchΒ· Added 31 Oct 2026, published 29 Oct 2026






