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Alibaba is giving people free access to its generative artificial intelligence models that can produce highly realistic videos and images from both text and image input. The company has announced that four variants of its Wan 2.1 series, the latest version of its generative AI technology, are now open source and can be downloaded and modified by users. Researchers, academics and commercial entities can all get them from Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope and Hugging Face platforms, both of which give people access to open-source AI models. As Reuters said, the models Alibaba has open sourced are called T2V-1.3B, T2V-14B, I2V-14B-720P and I2V-14B-480P, with the 14B indicating that the model can accept 14 billion parameters. Last month, Chinese company DeepSeek made its R1 reasoning model free to download and use, creating a clamor for more open-source AI technologies. DeepSeek even expanded its commitment to the open-source community and is in the process of releasing five code repositories behind its service. Alibaba was one of the companies that joined the fray to develop generative AI tech following the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT two years ago. Just recently, Alibaba Group's Chairman, Joe Tsai, said that the company's generative AI technology will power artificial intelligence features for iPhones meant for sale in the Chinese market. Apple couldn't use the same AI tech for phones released in China due to strict regulations surrounding AI products, so it has to look for local partners, Alibaba being one of them. Big News from @alibaba_cloud! Meet WanX - our next-gen AI model redefining video generation ! Presenting mind-blowing demos from WanX 2.1 Even more exciting:WanX 2.1 will be OPEN-SOURCE !Coming soon #AIart #OpenSource pic.twitter.com/R1laOyJYAL Wan (@Alibaba_Wan) February 20, 2025 This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/alibaba-offers-free-access-to-its-ai-model-that-can-generate-realistic-video-and-images-133045633.html?src=rss
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Apple is far from saintly, but, compared to its fellow tech giants, it did something right. The company's shareholders have voted to keep its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, following a push by conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), to remove them, Reuters reports. The Center's proposal, Request to Cease DEI Efforts, failed 8.84 billion votes to 210.45 million votes or about 2.3 percent of the vote. Many of these programs emerged or expanded when the Black Lives Matter movement exploded onto the global stage in 2020. However, President Trump's criticisms and threats that DEIs could violate the law along with spineless greed from executives has seen companies like Meta and Google reduce or even fully remove these programs. Those in favor of the proposal at Apple argued that the company could face an uptick in discrimination cases if current policies remain. At the meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that "strength has always come from hiring the very best people and then providing a culture of collaboration, one where people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives come together to innovate." Now, none of this is to say that Apple has incredible DEI efforts. Previously, its shareholders rejected greater transparency about its racial and gender gaps. They also voted down a measure that would require Apple to further investigate the risks of its AI efforts. Cook is also doing plenty of appeasing when it comes to Trump. The pair reportedly met last week and Apple has announced $500 billion in US-based spending over the next four years. He also donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration and attended it alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other tech executives.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-is-keeping-its-dei-program-130033491.html?src=rss
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Taking a powder-fresh approach to climate protection, a new initiative assigns monetary value to snow, framing it as a critical natural resource for Canada's economy. Found at snowmethemoney.ca, Foreca$ter calculates the dollar value of predicted snowfall, with each centimeter worth approximately CDN 25.5 million. This valuation is based on the CDN 9.1 billion contributed annually by the snowsports industry divided by the average 358 centimeters of snowfall in Canadian ski areas. At the local level, this translates to about CDN 93,000 per centimeter of snow at each of Canada's 275 ski resorts.
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