Public reaction is mixed, with excitement over democratization of AI tools but concerns about privacy, authenticity, and deepfake misuse, prompting calls for transparent guidelines and safeguards.

Potential applications span entertainment, healthcare, marketing/retail, and education, including interactive avatars for telemedicine, product demos, and language learning.

The upgrade enables static portrait photos to be transformed into dynamic, film-quality avatars that can speak and sing.

By combining open-source access with advanced capabilities, Alibaba positions itself competitively in the global AI race and accelerates adoption across industries.

Alibaba unveiled a sweeping, three-year plan to invest RMB 380 billion (about US$53 billion) in AI and cloud infrastructure to race OpenAI and Microsoft, signaling a bold push to dominate global AI capabilities.

The company aims to lead global AI advancement through aggressive investment, open-source collaboration, and innovative multimodal video generation that could reshape multiple markets.

New releases show multi-modal inputs (text, image, video) and integration with Alibaba Cloud, with Wan2.1-VACE released in May 2025 and Wan2.2 launched in late July 2025 as open-source.

Alibaba has pursued an open-source strategy, releasing Wan2.2-S2V and other Wan-series tools to spur third-party innovation and ecosystem growth.

The Wan video-generation upgrade relies on Mixture-of-Experts architectures to boost efficiency and performance.

Looking ahead, the effort could democratize access to high-quality avatar tech, enable new business models, and influence global AI governance alongside Western rivals.