Open · Wired
Sanctioned Chinese AI Firm SenseTime Launches Image Model Built for Speed
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SenseTime, a Chinese AI company best known for its facial recognition technology, released a new open source model on Tuesday that it claims can both generate and interpret images far faster than top models developed by US competitors.
Key facts
- On release day, 10 Chinese chip designers, including Cambricon and Biren Technology, announced their hardware supports U1
- SenseTime was founded in 2014 and became a world leader in computer vision, which is used in applications like facial recognition and autonomous driving — It can reason with images as well,” Dahua Lin, cofounder and chief scientist at SenseTime, said
- Lin, who is also a professor of information engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that models capable of processing images directly will enable robots to better understand
Summary
The model’s secret sauce is its ability to “read” images without translating them to text first, speeding up the process and reducing the amount of computing power required. Lin, who is also a professor of information engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that models capable of processing images directly will enable robots to better understand the physical world in the future. Like DeepSeek's latest flagship model, SenseTime says U1 can be powered by Chinese-made chips. That flexibility matters because US export controls restrict Chinese firms from accessing the world's most advanced AI chips, particularly those used for training, which at this point are primarily developed by Western companies like Nvidia.