- Chinese tech giant Alibaba on Friday launched Tongyi Wanxiang, an artificial intelligence tool that can generate images from prompts.
- Tongyi Wanxiang is Alibaba’s latest generative AI product as Chinese and US tech giants try to get ahead in the technology.
- At this time, AI text-to-image generation services are already available.
- OpenAI’s services called DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are two of the best known.
A billboard for Alibaba Group seen at the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence (WAIC) in Shanghai, China on July 6, 2023.
Ally Song | Reuters
Chinese tech giant Alibaba on Friday launched an artificial intelligence tool that can generate images from prompts.
Tongyi Wanxiang allows users to input prompts in Chinese and English, and AI tools generate images in different styles such as sketches and 3D cartoons.
Alibaba’s cloud division, which launched the product, said it was available for beta testing by enterprise customers in China.
Tongyi Wanxiang is Alibaba’s latest generative AI product as Chinese and US tech giants try to get ahead in the technology.
Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence that can generate content based on prompts. To make this possible, it has been trained on massive amounts of data. The most famous example is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which sparked a rush for big tech companies to develop their own rivals.
In the US, Google launched an AI chatbot called Bard. And in China, Baidu released Ernie Bot and Alibaba released Tongyi Qianwen.
At this time, AI text-to-image generation services are already available. OpenAI’s services called DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are two of the best known.
“Tongyi Wanxiang’s release makes high-quality generative AI images more accessible, facilitating the development of innovative AI art and creative expression for companies in a wide range of fields, including e-commerce, games, design, and advertising.” Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said in a press release.
Tech giants are cautious about releasing generative AI products like this to avoid misleading regulators. Companies like Alibaba and Baidu are positioning their AI tools very specifically. Alibaba, for example, focuses on services for enterprises.
That’s because of regulations already in place by Chinese authorities in anticipation of generative AI technology. In January, the Chinese government introduced its first regulations governing “deep synthesis technology,” which regulates AI-altered images and videos. And in April, the regulator released draft rules aimed at governing how companies develop generative AI products.
