Alibaba, Huawei venture into AI

Alibaba Group and Huawei Technologies have recently revealed that they have new products, which include an artificial intelligence image generator and an AI model upgrade as Chinese companies jostle for position in the global AI race.

The Alibaba subsidiary, Alibaba Cloud presented at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai an image generator named Tongyi Wanxiang that will initially be available to enterprise customers in beta form.

Huawei also showcased the third iteration of its Panggu AI model at the beginning of its three-day annual developer conference in Dongguan. Chinese tech companies are aggressively developing AI products after the ChatGPT chatbot by OpenAI ignited a generative AI boom.

McKinsey gives an estimate that generative AI could eventually add US$7.3-trillion in value to the world economy each year. Alibaba’s image generator is set compete with Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E, US-based rivals that now have a large following worldwide.

In April, the company launched a ChatGPT-like text generator, Tongyi Qianwen. On top of the Tongyi Wanxiang image generator, which roughly translates as “truth from tens of thousands of pictures”, presented on Friday, Alibaba Cloud has also rolled out ModelScopeGPT, an AI tool for developers.

Huawei has also revealed that its AI takes a different approach from many AI applications. Rather than focusing on generating content, its Pangu 3.0 model would mostly serve industrial uses.

The Shenzhen-based company mentioned its model aims to ensure more efficient safety inspections for freight train carriages, AI assistance for local government services and more accurate weather predictions.