Stop retraining YOLO: a developer’s guide to zero-shot object detection with generative VLMs

If you have ever maintained a computer vision pipeline in a factory, warehouse, or construction site, you already know the drill. You spend weeks collecting images, annotating bounding boxes, and fine-tuning a YOLO or Faster R-CNN model just to detect safety helmets and high-visibility vests. Then, the safety department introduces a new type of protective glove, your model’s accuracy tanks, and you are thrust right back into the endless loop of data collection, labeling, and retraining. Generat...