There’s been an escalation in the generative AI large language model “wars” as Alibaba Qwen 2.5 launched Wednesday. This latest AI salvo from China-based Alibaba is directly aimed at its in-country rival DeepSeek, which launched its own AI--DeepSeek-V3--in December 2024 and its R1 version in mid-January.

Analysts say China’s AI investment is just beginning to pay off, with more firms expected to launch their own models soon.

New AI model Qwen2.5-Max has been released by Alibaba Alibaba claims it's superior to DeepSeek-V3 and others You can try it now using the Qwen Chat chatbot Things move quickly in the AI sphere, and no sooner have we got used to having DeepSeek around,