Alibaba launches its first AI model

Alibaba joins the race for AI leadership with the launch of its new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model, which, they clarify in the release, can understand more complex images and text than any current AI in the market. 

Alibaba Cloud is the branch of the Chinese company in charge of developing AI-related projects. A few months ago, it announced the development of its first AI model called Tongyi Qianwen, which can convert text into images. Now, Alibaba has gone a step further with its two new AI models, the first of which is Qwen-VL, which can answer open-ended image-related queries with Chinese and English texts and generate image captions.

The second, Qwen-VL-Chat, can perform more sophisticated tasks, such as performing mathematical calculations and creating a story based on multiple images or answering multiple rounds of questions.

Open Source AI models 

Alibaba's two new models will be open source, allowing researchers, academics, and companies worldwide to use them to create AI applications without investing much money and time in training their systems.

Until now, most generative artificial intelligence has focused on text understanding. However, both OpenAI and Alibaba have laid the foundation for the next trend in this field, where multimedia content understanding is starting to gain importance.

The tech giant has its focus on developing new AI models and, for the time being, is not charging for their use. This benefits the company by reaching more users and continuing to grow in preparation for its IPO.