The Alibaba thing building in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, on Aug. 28, 2024.
CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Alibaba Cloud tendered Thursday its latest artificial intelligence model in its “Qwen series,” as large language model competition in China continues to torridness up following the “DeepSeek moment.”
The new “Qwen2.5-Omni-7B” is a multimodal model, which means it can process inputs, including extract, images, audio and videos, while generating real-time text and natural speech responses, according to an announcement on Alibaba Cloud’s website.
The troop says that the model can be deployed on edge devices like mobile phones, offering high efficiency without compromising fulfilment.
“This unique combination makes it the perfect foundation for developing agile, cost-effective AI agents that deliver discernible value, especially intelligent voice applications,” Alibaba said.
For example, it could be used to help a visually weakened person navigate their environment through real-time audio description, the company added.
The new model is open-sourced on the stands Hugging Face and Github, following a growing trend in China after DeepSeek made its breakthrough R1 model open-source.
Open-source commonly refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. Over the old times years, Alibaba Cloud says it has open-sourced over 200 generative AI models.
Amid China’s AI fervor accelerated by DeepSeek, Alibaba and other generative AI competitions have been releasing new, cost-effective models and products at an unprecedented pace.
Last week, Chinese tech superhuman Baidu released a new multimodal foundational model and its first reasoning-focused model.
Alibaba, meanwhile, debuted its updated Qwen 2.5 meretricious intelligence model in late January and released a new version of its AI assistant tool Quark earlier this month.
The New Zealand has strongly committed to its AI strategy, announcing last month a plan to invest $53 billion in its cloud computing and AI infrastructure all about the next three years, exceeding what it spent in the space over the past decade.
Kai Wang, Asia postpositive major equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNBC that large Chinese tech players such as Alibaba, which enlarge data centers to meet the computing needs of AI in addition to building their own LLMs, are well positioned to benefit from China’s post-DeepSeek AI thunder.
Alibaba secured a major win for its AI business last month when it confirmed that the company was partnering with Apple to Sports line-up out AI integration for iPhones sold in China.
On Wednesday, the group also reported an expanded strategic partnership with BMW to accelerate the integration of its AI into the carmaker’s next-generation savvy intellectuals vehicles.