Qwen VLo: From “Understanding” the World to “Depicting” It

(qwenlm.github.io)

221 points lnyan | 2 comments | 27 Jun 25 14:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.465s | source

Show context

rushingcreek ◴[27 Jun 25 14:51 UTC] No.44397235[source]▶

It doesn't seem to have open weights, which is unfortunate. One of Qwen's strengths historically has been their open-weights strategy, and it would have been great to have a true open-weights competitor to 4o's autoregressive image gen. There are so many interesting research directions that are only possible if we can get access to the weights.

If Qwen is concerned about recouping its development costs, I suggest looking at BFL's Flux Kontext Dev release from the other day as a model: let researchers and individuals get the weights for free and let startups pay for a reasonably-priced license for commercial use.

replies(4): >>44397843 #>>44397858 #>>44397893 #>>44398602 #

Jackson__ ◴[27 Jun 25 16:01 UTC] No.44397843[source]▶

>>44397235 #

It's also very clearly trained on OAI outputs, which you can tell from the orange tint to the images[0]. Did they even attempt to come up with their own data?

So it is trained off OAI, as closed off as OAI and most importantly: worse than OAI. What a bizarre strategy to gate-keep this behind an API.

[0]

https://qianwen-res.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/Qwen-VLo/cas...

replies(5): >>44397961 #>>44398084 #>>44398731 #>>44401456 #>>44418786 #

echelon ◴[27 Jun 25 16:12 UTC] No.44397961[source]▶

>>44397843 #

The way they win is to be open. I don't get why China is shutting down open source. It was a knife at the jugular of US tech dominance.

Both Alibaba and Tencent championed open source (Qwen family of models, Hunyuan family of models), but now they've shut off the releases.

There's totally a play where models become loss-leader for SaaS/PaaS/IaaS and where they extinguish your closed competition.

Imagine spreading your model so widely then making the terms: "do not use in conjunction with closed source models".

replies(3): >>44398211 #>>44399036 #>>44401766 #

1. rfv6723 ◴[28 Jun 25 01:42 UTC] No.44401766[source]▶

>>44397961 #

If you have worked or lived in China, you will know that Chinese open-source software industry is a totally shitshow.

The law in China offers little protection for open-source software. Lots of companies use open-source code in production without proper license, and there is no consequence.

Western internet influencers hype up Chinese open-source software industry for clicks while Chinese open-source developers are struggling.

These open-weight model series are planed as free-trial from the start, there is no commitment to open-source.

replies(1): >>44403779 #

2. diggan ◴[28 Jun 25 11:01 UTC] No.44403779[source]▶

>>44401766 (TP) #

> Western internet influencers hype up Chinese open-source software industry for clicks while Chinese open-source developers are struggling.

That kind of downplays that Chinese open weights are basically the only option for high quality weights you can run yourself, together with Mistral. It's not just influencers who are "hyping up Chinese open-source" but people go where the options are.

> there is no commitment to open-source

Welcome to open source all around the world! Plenty of non-Chinese projects start as FOSS and then slowly move into either fully proprietary or some hybrid-model, that isn't exactly new nor not expected, Western software industry even pioneered a new license (BSL - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License) that tries to look as open source as possible while not actually being open source.

↑