Alibaba Debuts Avatar Updates to Its Video AI Model

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has updated its open-source video-generating artificial intelligence (AI) model.

That’s according to a report Tuesday (Aug. 26) by Bloomberg News, which describes this move as part of the company’s rapid pace of AI upgrades to keep up with its American and Chinese competition.

The update transforms portrait photos into “film-quality avatars” that can be prompted to speak, sing and perform, Alibaba said.

Bloomberg also pointed out that Alibaba has invested heavily in AI following the rise of DeepSeek this year.

“We read their research papers, and we said, ‘Holy cow … We are falling behind,’” Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai during a June fireside chat at the Viva Tech 2025 conference in Paris.

A few weeks later, Alibaba unveiled its Qwen series of LLMs, choosing to open-source many of the smaller models. Tsai said this democratizes access to AI, promotes third-party innovation and fuels demand for the company’s cloud computing infrastructure.

As Bloomberg noted, the company is facing competition from the likes of Google, AI startup Manus and Kuaishou Technology, all of which have debuted new or updated video tools in recent months.

So far, this pivot has not paid off, the Bloomberg report added.

Alibaba reported a 7% increase in revenue in May as it faced a downturn in consumer spending. The company is scheduled to release its latest quarterly earnings on Aug. 29.

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote Tuesday about findings from the the August edition of The CAIO Report, “Tech on Tech: How the Technology Sector Is Powering Agentic AI Adoption,” which shows a divide in industry readiness as businesses move from generative AI to adopting fully agentic AI workflows.

“Sectors such as software and financial services are surging ahead, buoyed by engineering talent, agile risk cultures and flexible budgets,” PYMNTS wrote. ”On the other hand, goods and services industries, including manufacturing, logistics, retail and hospitality, are lagging, held back by structural fragmentation, operational complexity and murkier paths to return in investment (ROI).

“Ultimately, what the research highlights is that the evolution from AI novelty to full-on AI autonomy turns on two intertwined axes: trust and industry tailwinds. Trust represents the confidence companies have that systems will perform as intended, and tailwinds speak to the strategic and structural benefits tied to certain sectors that help enable rapid, risk-tolerant adoption,” PYMNTS added.