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Qwen Image 2.1

740 points · 199 comments · jmillikin

  1. vunderba · · focus · HN ↗
    So thoughts

    Positives

    • It's a heck of a lot smaller than Qwen-Image 1 (20b parameters) at only 7b, making it one of the smaller open-weight models available (Z-Image Turbo is one of the few that is smaller at 6b) when compared to Ideogram, Krea2, Flux2, etc.

    • It supports native transparency (Qwen's team, as far as I know, is the only one attempting to tackle this). Even though it's relatively trivial to set up background removal postprocessors, it's also neat to see it natively supported.

    • It's fast using QwenImage2.1 convrot, a 1MP image took around ~5 seconds on an RTX4090.

    Negatives

    • The license (assuming you respect it) is far more restrictive. The original Qwen Image 1 was released under the standard Apache license; this one explicitly forbids commercial usage without obtaining a separate license. On the other hand, a lot of us didn't expect the Qwen team to ever release "weights-available" ever again.

    Qwen-Image 1.0, released about a year ago, only scored 4/15 on my GenAI Showdown Benchmarks. Since that time, they've been upstaged by Krea 2 (6/15) and Ideogram4 (8/15). I'll post the new results once I have some more time to run them.

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;genai-showdown.specr.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;genai-showdown.specr.net

    1. alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
      They&#x27;re trying to cash in but this is just sad
      1. thenthenthen · · focus · HN ↗
        Within a few days this seems a total pivot from Xiaomi’s op RL dashboard and the praise of Chinese open model? What is the sentiment now?
        1. cmrdporcupine · · focus · HN ↗
          Everything is combined and uneven, including the opinions of hackernews commenters?

          There is no single opinion, and clearly no single Chinese approach.

          Also Chinese labs are in particular very careful about anything which be used to create pornographic content, which is highly illegal in the PRC.

          1. thenthenthen · · focus · HN ↗
            It is a total wild west here (i live in China). No escape from AI, literally everything is AI, from AI toilet paper to AI companions. No one has money or jobs and when this bubble bursts we are so cooked.
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