Chinese technology giants ByteDance and Alibaba have unveiled new artificial intelligence image-generation tools aimed at competing with Google’s widely used Nano Banana editor. The launches come as competition between China and the United States intensifies in the fast-growing AI sector. Both companies say their new models offer professional-quality image creation at a lower cost for users and businesses.
TikTok owner ByteDance announced its latest AI image model, Seedream 5.0, claiming it delivers stronger reasoning, improved accuracy and better editing controls compared to existing tools. According to the company, the model can understand text prompts more clearly, allowing users to generate images that closely match their instructions.
The company said Seedream 5.0 is designed to compete directly with image-editing tools developed by Google, particularly Nano Banana, which has gained popularity for its advanced editing features. ByteDance has made the new model available for beta testing through its platforms Jimeng AI and CapCut.
On the same day, Alibaba also released a new image-generation model through Alibaba Cloud. The company said its Qwen-Image-2.0 model uses a lightweight design that allows for faster image creation and improved performance, especially when generating Chinese text within images.
Alibaba added that its new tool performs better than Google’s competing products when handling complex characters, making it more suitable for local users and businesses. The company sees the model as part of its broader push into artificial intelligence services.
The near-simultaneous launches highlight growing competition among major tech firms as they race to develop more affordable and capable AI tools for global users.
