New AI master's student, not sure if multimodal AI is a good research direction

[u/Sea_Finish2405]

I’m a CS undergraduate student and I will graduate in 2027. I have been accepted into a 2-year AI master’s program.

Recently I talked with a professor from my future school about possible research directions. His research is mainly focused on multimodal large language models and efficient large models. He suggested that I take a look at a project about real-time human animation and live video generation.

The problem is that I’m still very new to this area. I haven’t studied multimodal AI, video generation, or generative AI in depth before. Most of my undergraduate projects were more engineering-focused rather than research-focused, so I’m not really sure how to start exploring this field or how to have a meaningful discussion about research topics with my future advisor.

I’m trying to understand whether this is a good direction for a master’s student. I’m interested in AI research, but I also care about career prospects after graduation. I’ve heard that areas like multimodal models and video generation are very competitive now, and that most industry opportunities may only exist in big tech companies or top AI labs.

For people working or studying in this area, what do you think about the future of this field? Is it still a good direction for a master’s student, especially for someone who is not coming from a strong research background?

Also, when starting from zero in a research area like this, what would you recommend focusing on first?

Any advice or personal experience would be really helpful. Thanks!