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Alibaba and Huawei Unveil New AI Products as China’s AI Race Heats Up

Written by Abdullah Shahid ·  1 min read >
Alibaba AI Photo Generator
Presented at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Alibaba’s AI Image Generator named ‘Tongyi Wanxiang’ is available for enterprise customers in beta form

Chinese technology giants, Alibaba and Huawei showcased new AI products as China’s AI industry goes on to become more competitive. Products included a new AI image generator and an AI model upgrade.

Alibaba Cloud, which is now a subsidiary company to Alibaba after an internal shakeup, presented at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai and introduced its new AI image generator named the Tongyi Wanxiang, which according to the company is still in its Beta form and is only available to enterprise customers.

Huawei, which was presenting at the annual developer conference in Dongguan revealed its latest and third iteration of its Panggu AI model, which during its first announcement last month was reported to beat OpenAI’s GPT 3.5.

Artificial Intelligence, which noticed a large boom after the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has been multiplying in value. McKinsey, which is a global management consulting firm, estimates that AI will go on to add over $7.3 trillion into the world economy each year.

Offering features similar to their western competitors, these Chinese AI products will increase competition in the industry. Alibaba’s ‘Tongyi Wanxiang’, which literally translates to “truth from tens of thousands of pictures,” will compete with other similar photo generators such as OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney Inc’s Midjourney.

Huawei’s AI model ‘Pangu’ however is planned to have a different approach; rather than being in the already competitive ‘generative AI industry’, the Pangu AI model will be used to serve industrial usages.

Industrial applications of the AI model, according to Huawei, includes safety inspections for freight train carriages, accurate weather predictions and even AI assistance in government services etc.

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