Alibaba Group Holding has released a new artificial intelligence model that it says can read emotions, in an apparent bid to outpace OpenAI’s latest model.
In two demonstrations, Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab researchers showed their new open source R1-Omni inferring the emotional state of a person in a video while also offering descriptions of their clothes and environment. It adds another layer of understanding to so-called computer vision, and is an enhanced version of another open source model, HumanOmni, authored by the same lead researcher, Jiaxing Zhao.
Alibaba’s effort to carve out a leading position in AI was accelerated by DeepSeek’s splashy debut in January, and the ecommerce leader is now pushing out new releases of AI tools and apps in several arenas. It benchmarked its Qwen model against DeepSeek, secured a major partnership with Apple for AI on iPhones, and now looks to be taking on OpenAI as well. It’s offering R1-Omni for users to download for free on Hugging Face.
OpenAI pushed out its GPT-4.5 model earlier this year, which the San Francisco-based startup said is better at picking up on and responding to subtle cues from users’ written prompts. But the model comes with a hefty price tag: it is initially available only to users who pay $200 a month.
The Hangzhou-based tech company’s Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu told analysts in February that artificial general intelligence is now Alibaba’s “primary objective.”
By Bloomberg
