Alibaba challenges OpenAI and Google with new multimodal AI model

South China Morning Post - Sep 23, 2025

Alibaba Group Holding on Tuesday unveiled a suite of new artificial intelligence models, including a multimodal system rivalling OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s popular “Nano Banana” image editor, intensifying both domestic and international competition in the field. Chief among the new releases was Qwen3-Omni, a flagship multimodal model akin to OpenAI’s GPT-4o launched in May 2024. The Alibaba model is designed to process a combination of text, audio, image and video inputs and respond with text...

Read full article
More News
AI, fuelled by advanced chips, set to power semiconductor manufacturing: industry veteran

AI, fuelled by advanced chips, set to power semiconductor manufacturing: industry veteran

Artificial intelligence is no longer merely the driving force behind global semiconductor demand, but is also actively reinventing how chips are designed and built, industry leaders and scientists said at a major science forum in Shanghai on Friday. Chen Yunji, co-founder of AI chipmaker Cambricon Technologies, predicted that the integration between AI and chip design would eventually automate the chip design process entirely. “In the [next] 10 years, the most important development … is the RSI...

Amid brutal sell-off, what comes next for Google, Amazon and other Big Tech titans?

Amid brutal sell-off, what comes next for Google, Amazon and other Big Tech titans?

Soaring artificial intelligence revenues have failed to shield Intel, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet from a brutal Wall Street sell-off, as their latest quarterly results deepened investor jitters over mounting capital spending and delayed returns. Intel plunged about 23 per cent in extended trading on Thursday, while Amazon shed 7.3 per cent. Alphabet tumbled 12.6 per cent during the regular session in its worst day on record, dragging the Nasdaq Composite down 1.4 per cent and...

Tencent targets Southeast Asia as launch pad for AI agent WorkBuddy amid tough local market

Tencent targets Southeast Asia as launch pad for AI agent WorkBuddy amid tough local market

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings is using Southeast Asia as a launch pad to take its “cost-effective” artificial intelligence tools global, fronted by its workplace assistant WorkBuddy, amid cutthroat competition at home. The company was targeting existing regional customers of its cloud computing and big data services, particularly in markets such as Indonesia, according to Dowson Tong, CEO of Tencent’s Cloud and Smart Industries Group. The international push coincided with triple-digit...

China’s microdrama war heats up as Tencent, ByteDance fight for eyeballs

China’s microdrama war heats up as Tencent, ByteDance fight for eyeballs

Shen Jiaoqi, a banker living in southern China’s Guangdong province, cannot stop watching microdramas. The shows are so addictive that she sometimes spends entire days gazing at her phone. One time, she even kept watching while she showered. “Honestly, I was watching for the eye candy rather than the plots,” she said. “The AI has really made the characters look stunning.” Shen is far from alone. Microdramas have exploded in popularity in China over the past few years, offering viewers a quick...

Elon Musk, Jensen Huang have opposing outlooks on AI neoclouds. Who is likely correct?

Elon Musk, Jensen Huang have opposing outlooks on AI neoclouds. Who is likely correct?

As investor anxiety over an artificial intelligence bubble mounts, SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Nvidia chief Jensen Huang have offered starkly divergent outlooks on whether the specialist cloud providers powering the boom can survive their mounting debts. While Musk has warned of impending collapses and consolidation among the more than 200 dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU) rental ventures known as “neoclouds”, Huang remains bullish, insisting that robust market demand will unlock the capital...

Huawei’s Tau Scaling Law roll-out reaches base stations in blow to US chip curbs

Huawei’s Tau Scaling Law roll-out reaches base stations in blow to US chip curbs

Huawei Technologies is already integrating elements of the Tau Scaling Law – a new chip design principle that helps the company overcome US export controls – into its wireless communications network, as it pushes for broader adoption across its products. The Chinese tech giant is using the “time compression” concept based on its Tau Scaling Law in its next-generation wireless base stations, according to a company statement released on Wednesday, and the new design is already delivering tangible...

ByteDance accelerates robotics commercialisation with new recruitment drive

ByteDance accelerates robotics commercialisation with new recruitment drive

ByteDance is accelerating its push into embodied artificial intelligence, stepping up recruitment for robotics talent as it seeks to move cutting-edge research out of the laboratory and into physical hardware. The Beijing-based owner of TikTok and Douyin is hiring for around a dozen robotics positions across hardware and software within its Seed team, the internal unit dedicated to AI research and large language model development, according to postings released on the company’s career website...

How China ‘risk factors’ loom over Anthropic’s hotly anticipated IPO filing

How China ‘risk factors’ loom over Anthropic’s hotly anticipated IPO filing

Open-weight models, China-US tensions, Taiwan – just a few of the more than dozen references to China-related risks cited in Anthropic’s much-anticipated listing prospectus, which was finally released on Monday after months of speculation. Mostly concentrated within the 93-page “risk factors” section of the filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the disclosures reveal how the Silicon Valley start-up assesses the commercial threats posed by China and its artificial intelligence...

Moonshot apologises after Kimi K3.1 Pro roll-out stumbles as promotional scrutiny widens

Moonshot apologises after Kimi K3.1 Pro roll-out stumbles as promotional scrutiny widens

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI, developer of the popular Kimi series, apologised on Monday for limiting customers’ use of its latest model in a botched roll-out that has also invited scrutiny over its promotional practices and cybersecurity measures. “We’re sorry for the rate limits and unnecessary quota consumption on the K3.1 Pro subscription plan,” Moonshot said in a post on social media. In a separate Chinese-language notice, it said it took responsibility for the...

ZTE up 7% after AI pivot, computing surge drive massive increase in third-quarter profit

ZTE up 7% after AI pivot, computing surge drive massive increase in third-quarter profit

Shares in ZTE rose more than 7 per cent in Hong Kong on Tuesday after the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker posted a nearly fivefold jump in third-quarter profit, driven by rapid expansion in its computing infrastructure and overseas operations. Net profit attributable to shareholders reached 1.31 billion yuan (US$196.3 million) for the three months ended September 30, up 395 per cent from a year earlier, according to an exchange filing released on Monday evening. Revenue climbed 34 per...

Alibaba Cloud founder on how AI can unlock human potential

Alibaba Cloud founder on how AI can unlock human potential

Long before artificial intelligence became the next big thing in the tech industry, Wang Jian was crafting the foundational infrastructure that would eventually power it. In 2008, he joined Alibaba Group Holding – owner of the South China Morning Post – as chief architect and founded Alibaba Cloud in 2009, convincing the company’s leadership to invest heavily in building a cloud computing infrastructure from scratch. Today, Wang’s purview has expanded considerably. As an academician at the...

China shoots ahead on AI video models

China shoots ahead on AI video models

While few dispute that China is narrowing the gap with the United States in developing artificial intelligence (AI) models, there is one area where Chinese firms are already the undisputed leaders: video. China has seen a proliferation of advanced generative AI video models – systems trained on visual data to generate or edit video content based on user inputs such as text prompts, images and audio. The country’s vast short-video ecosystems and looser copyright rules have helped give Chinese...

Recommended
About Us

Daily World Web took the initiative to utilize the development in cloud and AI technology to create a free, instantaneous and borderless flow of news, the way it should be.

Quick Links
PressAdvertiseContactTermsPrivacy Policy
News
Copyright © 2015 - 2026 Daily World Web. All Rights Reserved.