Alibaba Cloud revealed at the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Global Summit a slew of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) products and services designed to meet the surging demand for generative AI development worldwide. These advancements in AI technology are said to not only improve how the world views generative AI, but also to revolutionise how businesses create, innovate, and adapt to the unstoppable wave of AI-driven possibilities.
Dongliang Guo, Vice President of Product and Solution for International Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group highlighted at the summit the main reason Alibaba Cloud has dove headfirst into AI: It is trying to leverage generative AI internally to enhance business productivity across the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem and provide its customers a range of benefits in the process.
Dongliang Guo, Vice President of Product and Solution for International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group
The diverse range of AI solutions presented by Alibaba Cloud encompasses AI computing platforms, AI acceleration services, and AI-centric applications. These offerings are specifically designed to empower customers, enabling them to embark on their generative AI journey with enhanced efficiency, a focus on security, and cost-effectiveness as key pillars.
Some of the comprehensive AI services for generative AI development that Alibaba Cloud has laid out during the summit are as follows:
- PAI-Lingjun Intelligent Computing Service. This powerful AI computing platform simplifies complex AI processes, such as foundation model training and inference. Already in use in Mainland China, it will become available in Singapore as early as 2024, with further expansion planned across Asia. It provides comprehensive AI engineering capabilities, including AI development, training, role management, and resource management.
- Alibaba Cloud AI Acceleration Solution. This solution leverages datasets and hardware accelerators to optimise data-intensive applications, significantly speeding up AI model training and inference tasks. It can accelerate AI model training by 70% and inference by up to three times, as per the Stanford DAWN Deep Learning Benchmark.
- OpenSearch LLM-Based Conversational Search. Alibaba Cloud introduces its proprietary large-scale distributed search engine. This engine, fuelled by large language models, enables intelligent search services across various domains, ensuring security, accuracy, and reliability. It supports multi-modal search results, making it a versatile tool for businesses.
Alibaba Cloud’s AI-Powered Initiatives for the 19th Asian Games
Fittingly, Alibaba Cloud took the chance to showcase some of its generative AI prowess with a series of initiatives in the ongoing 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.
- Bringing History to Life
In collaboration with the Olympic Council of Asia, Alibaba Cloud has embarked on a remarkable journey to restore the visual heritage of past Asian Games. Leveraging its powerful AI models, the platform is breathing new life into aged images, meticulously enhancing facial details, eliminating imperfections, and reviving faded colours. These restored photographs will be showcased at a special AI photo restoration exhibition hosted by the Olympic Council of Asia and its Official Library during the Hangzhou Asian Games.
- Your 24/7 Concierge
Alibaba Cloud introduced an intelligent service robot that is already revolutionising the experience of those residing in the Asian Games Villages. Offering assistance in both English and Chinese, the Alibaba chatbot, equipped with Alibaba Cloud’s natural language processing technology, provides real-time responses related to the myriad of services available within the Villages. With a potential user base of over 20,000 athletes, reporters, and officials, this AI-powered chatbot promises to be an indispensable companion during the event.
- A Fusion of Tradition and Innovation
In a remarkable collaboration with a distinguished Chinese director, Alibaba Cloud unveiled a captivating digital art piece. Powered by its AI image generation model, Tongyi Wanxiang, this artwork draws inspiration from iconic scenic spots in Hangzhou. Tongyi Wanxiang lends its creative prowess to produce images reminiscent of traditional Chinese painting, elegantly capturing the essence of the Hangzhou Asian Games. The director, in turn, used these AI-generated images as a reference while crafting video productions.
Beyond art, Alibaba Cloud has extended Tongyi Wanxiang’s capabilities thanks to a collaboration with China Post, resulting in the creation of a series of postal stamps. The model’s text-to-image, style transfer, and image-to-image capabilities came to the forefront in this partnership as it recreated six famous Hangzhou landmarks in a futuristic style. The postal stamps harmoniously present AI-generated images alongside their original counterparts, offering a glimpse into the creative synergy of man and machine.
The Series of Postal Stamps in Collaboration Between Alibaba Cloud and China Post
With Alibaba Cloud joining the generative AI bandwagon, businesses worldwide are now spoiled with options as they look to harness the power of generative AI for their own use and benefit.
Indeed, the future of gen-AI is already bright, and it is about to get a lot brighter.
