Alibaba Launches New Open Source AI Photo Editor

The AI landscape has a new contender in the image editing space. E-commerce giant Alibaba, through its Qwen AI research team, has launched a new open-source, text-based AI photo editor. The developers are making bold claims, stating it delivers “state-of-the-art” performance and supports prompts in both English and Chinese.

What is Qwen Image Edit

Named Qwen-Image-Edit, this new tool is designed for a wide range of editing tasks. Its core function is to allow users to add, remove, or modify specific areas of an image with simple text commands, leaving the rest of the picture untouched.

But its ambitions go further. The tool is also built to handle more complex, higher-level edits like rotating an object within a photo or transferring the artistic style from one image to another. It even claims to work with text inside images, giving users the ability to add, remove, or change words while preserving the original font, size, and style.

Advanced Capabilities and Lofty Promises

The promises are significant. Qwen-Image-Edit aims to interpret everything from simple to complex text prompts and apply them to various image types, including photos and drawings, all while maintaining the original image's intent. The development team asserts that the tool is precise enough to remove fine details like stray hair strands from a photo, a task that typically requires manual tools like the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush in Adobe Photoshop.

Early examples and user tests shared online showcase its potential for creative edits, virtual try-ons, and novel view synthesis, where the AI generates a different perspective of an object in a photo.

How to Access Qwen Image Edit

You can experiment with the tool through Alibaba’s Qwen chat, the company's alternative to ChatGPT. A limited number of prompts are available for free, with further use requiring a paid membership.

Because the model is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, companies can also set it up on their own servers for internal use. As Venture Beat reports, it is also available through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio for approximately $0.045 per image.

Real World Tests A Mixed Bag

Despite the promising examples, initial hands-on testing reveals some inconsistencies. In trials conducted by PetaPixel, original prompts provided to the platform did not yield satisfactory results. The tool often failed to make small, precise edits, instead opting to completely redraw the image as a new AI generation, which defeated the purpose of a targeted edit.

For example, when tasked with restoring an old, degraded black-and-white photo, the result looked impressive at first glance. However, closer inspection revealed common AI artifacts. Edges appeared muddy, colors were blotchy, and the overall texture lacked the authenticity of a real photograph.

Original Image:

AI-Processed Image:

While Qwen-Image-Edit shows flashes of brilliance, it can also produce wholly unusable results. For now, it seems that professional tools like Photoshop remain the more reliable option for precise and high-quality image editing.