Chinese tech giants Alibaba Group and Huawei Technologies unveiled new AI-powered products on Friday, including an AI-driven image generator and an updated AI model.
At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held annually in Shanghai, Alibaba Cloud showcased an AI image generator named Tongyi Wanxiang that will be initially released in beta for enterprise customers only.
Alibaba’s AI tool enables users to submit prompts both in English and Chinese, after which the AI will subsequently create an image in various styles, such as a sketch or a 3D cartoon.
In the photos included in the press release, readers could see four different prompt examples and their outcomes.
“With the release of Tongyi Wanxiang, high-quality generative AI imagery will become more accessible, facilitating the development of innovative AI art and creative expressions for businesses across a wide range of sectors, including eCommerce, gaming, design, and advertising,” noted Alibaba Cloud Intelligence CTO Jingren Zhou.
The image generator from Alibaba will pose competition to DALL-E and Midjourney, American counterparts that have accrued substantial global user bases.
Following a significant restructuring in March that divided the tech powerhouse into six divisions, Alibaba Cloud launched its own text generator akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT in April.
In addition to the Tongyi Wanxiang image generator, Alibaba Cloud also introduced ModelScopeGPT, an AI tool designed for developers.
Huawei Releases Pangu Large Model 3.0 for AI Industry
Meanwhile, Huawei revealed the third version of its Pangu AI model during the inaugural day of its annual three-day developer conference in Dongguan city.
The company emphasized that its AI pursues a different pathway from the majority of AI applications. Rather than concentrating on content generation, the Pangu 3.0 model is intended primarily for industrial applications.
Explaining the tool, Huawei asserted that its model is designed to bolster the efficiency of safety inspections for cargo train carriages, assist local government services with AI, and enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts.
“Huawei continues to build its own core around the three directions of industry reshaping, technology taking root, and openness and flying together. Competitiveness will reshape thousands of industries,” Huawei Cloud Chief Executive Zhang Pingan noted in an official statement.
The announcements come a day after ChatGPT developer OpenAI revealed it will allow access to its GPT-4 model to all subscribed developers, while also making its GPT-3.5 Turbo, DALL-E, and Whisper application programming interfaces (APIs) broadly available.
