  Fine-grained classification is a challenging task that involves identifying
subtle differences between objects within the same category. This task is
particularly challenging in scenarios where data is scarce. Visual transformers
(ViT) have recently emerged as a powerful tool for image classification, due to
their ability to learn highly expressive representations of visual data using
self-attention mechanisms. In this work, we explore Semi-ViT, a ViT model fine
tuned using semi-supervised learning techniques, suitable for situations where
we have lack of annotated data. This is particularly common in e-commerce,
where images are readily available but labels are noisy, nonexistent, or
expensive to obtain. Our results demonstrate that Semi-ViT outperforms
traditional convolutional neural networks (CNN) and ViTs, even when fine-tuned
with limited annotated data. These findings indicate that Semi-ViTs hold
significant promise for applications that require precise and fine-grained
classification of visual data.
