Alibaba unveils new AI model in Qwen series for multimodal processing

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has released a new artificial intelligence model in its Qwen series that the company says can process text, pictures, audio and video, and is efficient enough to run directly on mobile phones and laptops.

The company said it expects that the new model, now publicly available on Hugging Face and GitHub, will be used to build so-called AI agents that can, for example, help a visually impaired person navigate their environment through real-time audio descriptions.