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| [#github-license]: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/blob/master/LICENSE | |
| [#pypi-package]: https://pypi.org/project/sentence-transformers/ | |
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| [#docs-package]: https://www.sbert.net/ | |
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| # Sentence Transformers: Multilingual Sentence, Paragraph, and Image Embeddings using BERT & Co. | |
| This framework provides an easy method to compute dense vector representations for **sentences**, **paragraphs**, and **images**. The models are based on transformer networks like BERT / RoBERTa / XLM-RoBERTa etc. and achieve state-of-the-art performance in various task. Text is embedding in vector space such that similar text is close and can efficiently be found using cosine similarity. | |
| We provide an increasing number of **[state-of-the-art pretrained models](https://www.sbert.net/docs/pretrained_models.html)** for more than 100 languages, fine-tuned for various use-cases. | |
| Further, this framework allows an easy **[fine-tuning of custom embeddings models](https://www.sbert.net/docs/training/overview.html)**, to achieve maximal performance on your specific task. | |
| For the **full documentation**, see **[www.SBERT.net](https://www.sbert.net)**. | |
| The following publications are integrated in this framework: | |
| - [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10084) (EMNLP 2019) | |
| - [Making Monolingual Sentence Embeddings Multilingual using Knowledge Distillation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09813) (EMNLP 2020) | |
| - [Augmented SBERT: Data Augmentation Method for Improving Bi-Encoders for Pairwise Sentence Scoring Tasks](https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.08240) (NAACL 2021) | |
| - [The Curse of Dense Low-Dimensional Information Retrieval for Large Index Sizes](https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14210) (arXiv 2020) | |
| - [TSDAE: Using Transformer-based Sequential Denoising Auto-Encoder for Unsupervised Sentence Embedding Learning](https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.06979) (arXiv 2021) | |
| - [BEIR: A Heterogenous Benchmark for Zero-shot Evaluation of Information Retrieval Models](https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.08663) (arXiv 2021) | |
| ## Installation | |
| We recommend **Python 3.6** or higher, **[PyTorch 1.6.0](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/)** or higher and **[transformers v4.6.0](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers)** or higher. The code does **not** work with Python 2.7. | |
| **Install with pip** | |
| Install the *sentence-transformers* with `pip`: | |
| ``` | |
| pip install -U sentence-transformers | |
| ``` | |
| **Install with conda** | |
| You can install the *sentence-transformers* with `conda`: | |
| ``` | |
| conda install -c conda-forge sentence-transformers | |
| ``` | |
| **Install from sources** | |
| Alternatively, you can also clone the latest version from the [repository](https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers) and install it directly from the source code: | |
| ```` | |
| pip install -e . | |
| ```` | |
| **PyTorch with CUDA** | |
| If you want to use a GPU / CUDA, you must install PyTorch with the matching CUDA Version. Follow | |
| [PyTorch - Get Started](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/) for further details how to install PyTorch. | |
| ## Getting Started | |
| See [Quickstart](https://www.sbert.net/docs/quickstart.html) in our documenation. | |
| [This example](https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/tree/master/examples/applications/computing-embeddings/computing_embeddings.py) shows you how to use an already trained Sentence Transformer model to embed sentences for another task. | |
| First download a pretrained model. | |
| ````python | |
| from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer | |
| model = SentenceTransformer('all-MiniLM-L6-v2') | |
| ```` | |
| Then provide some sentences to the model. | |
| ````python | |
| sentences = ['This framework generates embeddings for each input sentence', | |
| 'Sentences are passed as a list of string.', | |
| 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'] | |
| sentence_embeddings = model.encode(sentences) | |
| ```` | |
| And that's it already. We now have a list of numpy arrays with the embeddings. | |
| ````python | |
| for sentence, embedding in zip(sentences, sentence_embeddings): | |
| print("Sentence:", sentence) | |
| print("Embedding:", embedding) | |
| print("") | |
| ```` | |
| ## Pre-Trained Models | |
| We provide a large list of [Pretrained Models](https://www.sbert.net/docs/pretrained_models.html) for more than 100 languages. Some models are general purpose models, while others produce embeddings for specific use cases. Pre-trained models can be loaded by just passing the model name: `SentenceTransformer('model_name')`. | |
| [» Full list of pretrained models](https://www.sbert.net/docs/pretrained_models.html) | |
| ## Training | |
| This framework allows you to fine-tune your own sentence embedding methods, so that you get task-specific sentence embeddings. You have various options to choose from in order to get perfect sentence embeddings for your specific task. | |
| See [Training Overview](https://www.sbert.net/docs/training/overview.html) for an introduction how to train your own embedding models. We provide [various examples](https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/tree/master/examples/training) how to train models on various datasets. | |
| Some highlights are: | |
| - Support of various transformer networks including BERT, RoBERTa, XLM-R, DistilBERT, Electra, BART, ... | |
| - Multi-Lingual and multi-task learning | |
| - Evaluation during training to find optimal model | |
| - [10+ loss-functions](https://www.sbert.net/docs/package_reference/losses.html) allowing to tune models specifically for semantic search, paraphrase mining, semantic similarity comparison, clustering, triplet loss, contrastive loss. | |
| ## Performance | |
| Our models are evaluated extensively on 15+ datasets including challening domains like Tweets, Reddit, emails. They achieve by far the **best performance** from all available sentence embedding methods. Further, we provide several **smaller models** that are **optimized for speed**. | |
| [» Full list of pretrained models](https://www.sbert.net/docs/pretrained_models.html) | |
| ## Application Examples | |
| You can use this framework for: | |
| - [Computing Sentence Embeddings](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/computing-embeddings/README.html) | |
| - [Semantic Textual Similarity](https://www.sbert.net/docs/usage/semantic_textual_similarity.html) | |
| - [Clustering](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/clustering/README.html) | |
| - [Paraphrase Mining](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/paraphrase-mining/README.html) | |
| - [Translated Sentence Mining](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/parallel-sentence-mining/README.html) | |
| - [Semantic Search](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/semantic-search/README.html) | |
| - [Retrieve & Re-Rank](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/retrieve_rerank/README.html) | |
| - [Text Summarization](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/text-summarization/README.html) | |
| - [Multilingual Image Search, Clustering & Duplicate Detection](https://www.sbert.net/examples/applications/image-search/README.html) | |
| and many more use-cases. | |
| For all examples, see [examples/applications](https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/tree/master/examples/applications). | |
| ## Citing & Authors | |
| If you find this repository helpful, feel free to cite our publication [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10084): | |
| ```bibtex | |
| @inproceedings{reimers-2019-sentence-bert, | |
| title = "Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks", | |
| author = "Reimers, Nils and Gurevych, Iryna", | |
| booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing", | |
| month = "11", | |
| year = "2019", | |
| publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics", | |
| url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10084", | |
| } | |
| ``` | |
| If you use one of the multilingual models, feel free to cite our publication [Making Monolingual Sentence Embeddings Multilingual using Knowledge Distillation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09813): | |
| ```bibtex | |
| @inproceedings{reimers-2020-multilingual-sentence-bert, | |
| title = "Making Monolingual Sentence Embeddings Multilingual using Knowledge Distillation", | |
| author = "Reimers, Nils and Gurevych, Iryna", | |
| booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing", | |
| month = "11", | |
| year = "2020", | |
| publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics", | |
| url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09813", | |
| } | |
| ``` | |
| Please have a look at [Publications](https://www.sbert.net/docs/publications.html) for our different publications that are integrated into SentenceTransformers. | |
| Contact person: [Nils Reimers](https://www.nils-reimers.de), [info@nils-reimers.de](mailto:info@nils-reimers.de) | |
| https://www.ukp.tu-darmstadt.de/ | |
| Don't hesitate to send us an e-mail or report an issue, if something is broken (and it shouldn't be) or if you have further questions. | |
| > This repository contains experimental software and is published for the sole purpose of giving additional background details on the respective publication. | |