Alibaba Launches QwenVLo AI Model to Compete Globally

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has introduced QwenVLo, its latest multimodal AI model, as part of its ongoing efforts to strengthen its position in the increasingly competitive global AI landscape. This new model allows users to create and edit images using text prompts and visual inputs, positioning it to compete with leading AI developers such as OpenAI and DeepSeek.

QwenVLo represents an enhancement over Alibaba’s previous Qwen2.5-VL baseline model, extending its capabilities to include tasks such as text-to-image and image-to-image generation. One of its standout features is progressive generation, which enables users to see an image as it is being constructed, offering a level of transparency and interactivity that is relatively rare in current AI tools.

According to the company, QwenVLo not only "understands" the world but also generates high-quality recreations based on that understanding. Users can generate an image by sending a prompt, such as requesting a picture of a cute cat, or modify an existing image by uploading a cat photo and requesting an edit, like adding a cap on the cat’s head.

The push into AI is no longer just a supplementary effort for Alibaba’s e-commerce dominance. The company has been aggressively focusing on AI since early 2024. In February, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu emphasized that developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) had become the company’s top priority, underscoring the growing importance of AI to Alibaba’s future growth and competitive edge.

Alibaba has already launched a range of models under the Qwen brand, each tailored to specific modalities such as text, image, video, and audio. QwenVLo consolidates these functionalities and is designed to perform efficiently on lower-end machines, including mobile devices and personal laptops, unlike most state-of-the-art AI models that require significant cloud computing power.

In March 2025, Alibaba released a new Quark app that includes the new Qwen functionality. The app now operates as an AI-powered smart assistant with search, summarization, and creative tools, demonstrating Alibaba’s commitment to integrating AI models into consumer-facing experiences.

The release of QwenVLo by Alibaba coincides with a global wave of AI-related initiatives. OpenAI, a US-founded company, has released GPT-4o, its most advanced multimodal model yet, which can understand and respond with text, images, and audio. In China, DeepSeek, a homegrown startup, has claimed to have created a large competitive language model for just a few million dollars, highlighting the cost efficiency challenge in AI development.

Tech giants across China have since rushed to develop similar AI services that are faster, cheaper, and more versatile. Alibaba’s QwenVLo has the potential to compete with both Western and Chinese competitors by delivering high-quality and low-weight multimodal functionality. The race is now not just about building the smartest model but also about making that intelligence usable at scale.

Alibaba is betting that the types of people who use an app every day—students, designers, business owners, and developers—will be drawn to tools that are quick, simple to use, and optimized for various devices. However, whether QwenVLo will dominate the market remains to be seen. Alibaba has made it clear: China is not just keeping pace with the world in the race for AI supremacy—it is determined to lead it.