Alibaba recently launched Tongyi Wanxiang, an advanced AI tool capable of generating captivating images from prompts. Users can input prompts in both Chinese and English, and the tool produces images in various styles like sketches and 3D cartoons.
Currently, the beta version of Tongyi Wanxiang is exclusively available to enterprise customers in China. This innovation is part of Alibaba’s expanding portfolio of generative AI offerings, which showcases the intense competition between Chinese and American tech giants in this transformative field. Generative AI, exemplified by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is an impressive form of AI that creates content based on given prompts using extensive data training.
In the United States, Google introduced the AI chatbot Bard, while in China, Baidu launched Ernie Bot and Alibaba unveiled Tongyi Qianwen. These developments underscore the growing interest and investment in generative AI technologies.
Other notable AI text-to-image generation services include OpenAI’s DALL-E and the well-known Stable Diffusion service. According to Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, the launch of Tongyi Wanxiang will enhance accessibility to high-quality generative AI imagery.
This has the potential to revolutionize various industries such as e-commerce, gaming, design, and advertising. Tech giants are cautiously navigating the release of generative AI products to comply with regulatory frameworks. Alibaba and Baidu have strategically positioned their AI tools, with Alibaba focusing primarily on enterprise offerings.
Chinese authorities have already implemented regulations addressing “deep synthesis technologies,” covering AI-altered images and videos. To further regulate the development of generative AI products, draft rules were released by regulators in April.