Alibaba Has Launched a New AI Tool to Generate Images From Text Input

Today, technology giant Alibaba officially launched their anticipated AI tool, Tongyi Wanxiang. According to reports, it can generate images through text input. Interestingly enough, the AI allows users to input prompts in both Mandarin and English to generate images. The styles include everything from a sketch style to a 3D style cartoon.

The new AI tool comes from Alibaba’s cloud division which says that currently, the AI will be available for beta testing for their enterprise clients. This is another step forward for Chinese startups as they look to bridge the AI gap with the United States.

Back in May, Tongyi Wanxiang was previewed and rolled out by Alibaba and while speaking with CNBC, they also highlighted a desire to build tailored AI-powered products powered by their LLM. It’s clear that China wants to ensure that its AI market doesn’t fall behind its competitors.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, reportedly also told Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, during a meeting, that China wants to welcome American startups to the country as well. Likely in a bid to ensure their own market isn’t siloed from the rest of the world, though ChatGPT is banned in the country.

Of Tongyi Wanxiang, Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said in a press release, “With the release of Tongyi Wanxiang, high-quality generative AI imagery will become more accessible, facilitating the development of innovative AI art and creative expressions for businesses across a wide range of sectors, including e-commerce, gaming, design and advertising,”.

Chinese regulators are already anticipating the wide effects of AI. Last year, regulators placed a watermark requirement on Deep Fake images and videos. Early moves in the regulatory sphere caused Elon Musk to state that China was already ready to tackle AI regulation.

One thing to note about Tongyi Wanxiang, is that its capabilities aren’t new. AI programs such as DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion already offer text-to-image capabilities. Though it’s clear that China is interested in shoring up its own homegrown offerings.

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