Sanctioned Chinese AI Firm SenseTime Releases Image Model Built for Speed | WIRED

Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this storySenseTime, 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. SenseNova U1 could help the company reclaim lost ground after it slipped from its place among the leading players in China’s AI development race.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. “The model’s entire reasoning process is no longer limited to text. It can reason with images as well,” Dahua Lin, cofounder and chief scientist at SenseTime, said in an interview with WIRED.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. “Several Chinese domestic chipmakers have finished optimizing compatibility with our new model,” Lin says. On release day, 10 Chinese chip designers, including Cambricon and Biren Technology, announced their hardware supports U1.That flexibility matters because US export controls restrict Chinese firms from accessing the world's most advanced AI chips, particularly those used for...