New Quark will be available to all users gradually, starting with a pilot launched Thursday. Its launch came just a day after Alibaba launched an R1-Omni model that said it could read emotions. Both join a flurry of product updates and announcements from Chinese firms after Hangzhou-based DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley with a model comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but apparently developed at a fraction of the cost.
“As our model capabilities continue to evolve, we envision Quark as a gateway to endless possibilities where users can explore everything with AI,” Wu Jia, CEO of Quark and an Alibaba vice president, said in the statement.
Competition on the AI applications front is rising. A Chinese start-up made a splash last week with the Manus AI agent it claimed is capable of executing complicated tasks like analysing stocks or writing marketing plans for users. The tool is also only open to select users so far.
Alibaba accelerated efforts to carve out a leading position in AI after DeepSeek’s splashy debut in January.
See also: Musk's xAI seeks up to US$200 billion valuation in new funding
The e-commerce leader is now pushing out AI tools and apps in several arenas. It benchmarked its Qwen model against DeepSeek, secured a major partnership with Apple Inc. for AI on iPhones, and now aims to take on OpenAI as well. It’s offering the R1-Omni for users for free on Hugging Face.
