Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On July 16, FAW Group and Alibaba Group recently inaugurated their joint laboratory in Changchun city, Jilin province, marking a new phase in their collaboration on AI for the automotive sector, according to a press release from Alibaba Group.

Leveraging Alibaba's Qwen large language model, FAW Group plans to develop a domain-specific foundation model tailored to the automotive industry and deploy it across its full range of business scenarios.

Photo credit: FAW Group

The two companies have already introduced pioneering applications in the field, including GPT-BI—the industry's first large model-based BI tool—and OpenMind, an enterprise-grade AI agent.

While traditional development of general-purpose foundation models has faced challenges such as high computational demands, long iteration cycles, and steep R&D costs, advancements in model architecture and computing efficiency have now made domain-specific large models a feasible and strategic direction.

In response, FAW Group and Alibaba Cloud have launched a project to create a large model specifically for the automotive sector, targeting key technical challenges such as computational architecture optimization, domain-specific data governance, model pretraining, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and real-world applications. This effort aims to improve product quality, operational efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, while driving digital transformation and innovation within the enterprise.

The roadmap for the project includes a three-phase approach. First, the partners will combine Alibaba's Qwen and Qwen-VL multimodal models with FAW's deep industry data to build large language and multimodal models for the sector. Next, they will expand model capabilities across diverse application scenarios such as smart mobility and enterprise operations, accelerating innovation in areas including R&D, manufacturing, and customer service. In the final phase, they will explore cutting-edge concepts like embodied intelligence and smart industrial systems, working toward a closed-loop AI ecosystem.

Additionally, FAW Group and Alibaba Cloud will establish a joint engineering team to enhance model training and performance through advances in data preprocessing, model design, distributed training, compression, and deployment. The collaboration will also include the development of a joint talent pipeline, supporting the growth of AI expertise across the automotive industry.

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