Alibaba on Thursday released Qwen 2.5, a new set of open-source artificial intelligence models.
TakeAway Points:
- Alibaba enhanced the capabilities of its in-house technology on Thursday and released over 100 open-source artificial intelligence models.
- The company, which has its headquarters in Hangzhou, wants to get more competitive against US giants like Microsoft and OpenAI as well as domestic rivals like Baidu and Huawei.
- A new text-to-video solution built on Alibaba’s AI models was also released. This works similarly to OpenAI’s Sora in that users can provide a prompt, and the AI will produce a film based on it.
Alibaba’s 100 new open-source AI models
In an effort to increase rivalry, Alibaba enhanced the capabilities of its proprietary technology on Thursday and made more than 100 open-source artificial intelligence models available.
The newly-released models, known as Qwen 2.5, are designed for use in applications and sectors ranging from automobiles to gaming and science research, Alibaba said. They have more advanced capabilities in math and coding, it added.
The Hangzhou-headquartered firm is looking to increase competition with domestic rivals such as Baidu and Huawei, as well as U.S. titans like Microsoft and OpenAI.
AI models are trained on huge amounts of data. Alibaba says its models have the ability to understand prompts and generate texts and images.
Open-source means that anyone — including researchers, academics, and companies — around the world can use the models to create their own generative AI apps without needing to train their own systems, saving time and expense. By open-sourcing the models, Alibaba hopes more users will use its AI.
The launch of Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen
The Chinese e-commerce giant first launched its Tongyi Qianwen, or Qwen, model last year. Since then, it has released improved versions and says that, to date, its open source models have been downloaded 40 million times.
The company also said that it upgraded its proprietary flagship model called Qwen-Max, which is not open-source. Instead, Alibaba sells its capabilities through its cloud computing products to businesses. Alibaba said that Qwen Max 2.5-Max surpassed rivals such as Meta’s Llama and OpenAI’s GPT4 in several areas, including reasoning and language comprehension.
Alibaba also launched a new text-to-video tool based on its AI models. This allows users to input a prompt and the AI will create a video based on it. This is similar to OpenAI’s Sora.
“Alibaba Cloud is investing, with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure,” Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba, said in a statement.
Wu, who took over the role of CEO at Alibaba last year amid a historic reshuffle, has been trying to reinvigorate growth at the tech giant, as it faces headwinds including rising competition and a sluggish Chinese consumer.
Alibaba is one of the biggest cloud computing players in China, but internationally, it trails the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. The company is hoping that its latest AI offerings may tempt customers inside and outside of China to sign up for its cloud services, boosting a division that has been sluggish but showed early signs of an acceleration in the June quarter.
