Alibaba slashes AI audio prices 95% with Qwen Audio 3.1

alibaba's qwen team launched qwen-audio-3.1, consisting of five models for speech recognition, text-to-speech, and real-time interaction. the models improve multilingual and dialect recognition, automatically clean up filler words and repetitions, and add features like multi-speaker identification, emotion detection, and ambient sound detection. alibaba also significantly reduced prices for its ai audio services, with tts prices dropping about 70 percent, realtime roughly 85 percent, and asr up to 95 percent. these changes affect developers and businesses using ai audio services, potentially making them more accessible and affordable.