In just some months Alibaba is providing a complex ecosystem of AI generative models and services with AI inside able to match the complex needs of its enterprise clients in a wide range of sectors.
Tongyi Wanxiang and ModelScopeGPT are just the latest Generative AI services unveiled, but Alibaba Cloud’s open ecosystem of AI generative models already hostos over 900 AI models, and counting.
The Chinese e-commerce and tech giant not only is facing the latest AI developments by Microsoft, Alphabet or Meta, but positioning itself among the frontrunners of the AI generative services for companies worldwide.
Speaking to corporate leaders at a recent conference, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, Daniel Zhang, urged companies to embrace the digital tools on offer. He said if your company fails to keep pace with budding AI technology, “you may be the loser for the next generation”.
As it is the case when using metaverse and other tools available through Alibaba Cloud clients are provided, also through the same Cloud, with the needed training to use them.
A text to image Generative AI model named ‘Tens of Thousands of Images’
Tongyi Wanxiang (meaning Tens of Thousands of Images), the new text toimage IA model by Alibaba Cloud can generate images from natural-language prompts, ranging from watercolors and oil paintings to animation and 3D cartoons.
Against other Ai generative models like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, Tongyi Wanxiang will be particularly adaptable to companies’ needs in the world’s second-largest economy, China. Tongyi Wanxiang is capable of understanding prompts in Mandarin and English.
But it was launched in Beta just in Mandaring for testing during China’s annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.
“With the release of Tongyi Wanxiang, high-quality generative AI imagery will become more accessible,” said Zhou Jingren, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a press release on Friday. Zhou sees the model as fostering innovative AI art and creative expression for businesses across industries from e-commerce, gaming and design to advertising.
Besides the simple generation of images, Tongyi Wansiang can also apply the style of one image to another, or create variations of images similar in content and style to the original.
This Gen AI model is powered by Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary large model Composer, a text-to-image diffusion model capable of generating photo-realistic images given any text input.
Tongyi Wanxiang comes along other AI models all of them developed by Alibaba: Tongyi Qianwen and ModelScopeGPT. The latest one, which is a free to access AI service able to device answers combining the 900 AI models hosted in Alibaba Cloud’s open source, was unveiled the same day of the presentation of Tongyi Wanxiang.
Tongyi Qianwen, Tongyi Tingwu and Tmall Genie
The launch of Tongyi Wanxiang adds to the previous introduction of another artificial intelligence model by Alibaba called Tongyi Qianwen ( the name can be translated as seeking truth by asking a thousand questions), which is at the base of the new text to image AI generative model unveiled this month by Alibaba Cloud.
This large language model called Tongyi Qianwen is able to help corporate users perform tasks, from drafting business proposals to polishing essays.
Alibaba Cloud will embed Tongyi Qianwen into applications across Alibaba’s ecosystem.
The first step in this direction is adding Tongyi Qianwen to the new assistant Tongyi Tingwu. In a first stage, Tongyi Tingwu, which has already been launched, will be tested as part of DingTalk, Alibaba’s business communication platform, and Tmall Genie, its voice assistant, considered the equivalent of Amazon’s Alexa.
Tongyi Qianwen will enable the platform to automate meeting tasks: In DingTalk, Tongyi Qianwen can be used with simple prompts to summarize meetings in real time. It also enables translating meeting conversations to text, writing emails, and draft business proposals or campaign plans.
In Tmall Genie, the language AI model will make it possible engaging in dynamic conversations with Chinese users, even developing and telling stories for children, offering travel advice or making musical recommendations for practicins sports or just doing exercise.
Corporate clients and developers also have access to the model and can finetune it to build their own customized large language models.
The launch of Tongyi Qianwen last April this same year marked Daniel Zhang’s first major product unveiling since he took charge of Alibaba Cloud this year.
The AI technology has made waves across the globe in recent months with its promise to transform content creation and boost productivity in awide range of fields from finance to marketing.
Tongyi Qianwen understands text imputs both in Chinese and English and at the time of its presentation and opening for testing in Beta it was announced that it would develop image recognition and text-to-image capabilities in the future.
Said and done, scarcely 3 months later here it is Tongyi Wanxiang the Gen AI text to image model.
“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a statement issued at the time of launching Tongyi Qianwen.
According to the data shared by Alibaba on 27th April 2023, over 200,000 beta testing requests were received for its generative AI model Tongyi Qianwen. All of them from enterprise customers since its launch on 1st April 2023.
Requests for beta testing the AI model came from a broad range of sectors, including fintech, electronics, transport, fashion and dairy, according to Alibaba Cloud.own
About ModelScopeGPT, the AI able to device answers combining the 900 AI models hosted on ModelScope, Alibaba Cloud’s open source platform
Alibaba’s open-source tech community, ModelScope, uses large language models as an interface to link together various AI models in order to perform tasks more eficiently. And ModelScopeGPT is the large language AI model that can be used by enterprises and developers for free to access a variety of AI models hosted on Alibaba Cloud’s open-source platform called ModelScope. For example, a customer can make a request on ModelScopeGPT, which uses a large language model to interpret the request, pick up models stored on ModelScope based on model descriptions, and run the chosen models and report back the outcome.
By combinig the power of various AI models on ModelScope, ModelScopeGPT can produce output in texts, images, audio and videos.
Alibaba Cloud said the framework can help enterprises and developers perform sophisticated AI tasks across languages, visuals, and speech.
Over 900 AI models are hosted so far on Model Scope and these models have already received in aggregate over 36 million downloads since its launch.
“The ecosystem holds the key to competition among large-scale models in the long term…We believe Alibaba Cloud enjoys first-mover advantages in the market, demonstrating its strategic foresight,” said CICC analysts, including Yang Bai, in a report to investors.
Image over the headline.- Detail of the computer-generated image of a yung girl in traditional Chinese clothing. It is an image created by Tongyi Wanxiang on the prompt “a six-year-old girl’s beautiful and exquisite Chinese-style hangfu is displayed in front of a clothes rack, medium close-up, 85mm lens”
Related Eastwind Marketing links:
So it is Tongyi Wanxiang, the text to image Generative AI system by Alibaba Cloud (video)
Alibaba Cloud unveils blockchain and metaverse collaboration with Avalanche
Alibaba’s view on Generative AI and the Future of Creative Work (video)
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