iFlytek releases SparkDesk V2.0 and iFlyCode

Background

SparkDesk is iFlytek's large language model, and V2.0 was an update to an existing model rather than a new product line. The two themes the company put forward for the release were coding and multimodality: a stronger ability to write code, and the ability to handle images as well as text ^[1]. Alongside the model, iFlytek used the same launch to show a concrete tool for developers, a programming assistant called iFlyCode ^[1]. A coding assistant of this kind works by taking a description of what the developer wants — spoken or typed — and returning code that the developer can then run, keep or change.

The launch

iFlytek released SparkDesk V2.0 on 15 August 2023 at an event in Hefei, Anhui province ^[1][2]. The company said the new version upgraded the model's coding and multimodal abilities ^[1], and it launched iFlyCode 1.0 as a programming assistant for developers ^[1].

The demonstrations were not limited to text. The event included image understanding, image generation, and a poem-to-video demonstration, in which a poem is turned into video ^[2]. A coding assistant and image generation look like different products, but they ask the same underlying model for something other than prose: working code on one side, pictures and video on the other.

Key details

Vice president Liu Cong demonstrated how iFlyCode is meant to be used. Speaking instructions to the assistant, he had it build an aerial-handwriting function in Python, and the task took about 10 minutes ^[1]. The point of the demonstration was speed: a spoken request, rather than a written specification, produced a working feature.

iFlytek also put numbers behind the product. The company claimed that the coding upgrade in V2.0 would raise coding efficiency by 30% ^[3], and that in early alpha testing up to 30% of the code generated by the assistant could be used directly ^[3]. The second figure measures how much of the output a developer can keep without rewriting it; the first is a claim about the effect on the developer's own work.

Alongside the model and the assistant, iFlytek announced an all-in-one training and inference product with Huawei Ascend ^[1]. Training is the expensive process of building a model from data, and inference is running that model to answer each request; packaging the two together addresses the combination of software and computing hardware needed to operate large models.

Market reaction

According to Jiemian, iFlytek's shares fell 8.63% after the event ^[3]. A share price move is not a verdict on the technology, but it does show that the launch did not draw an unambiguously positive response from investors.

What the release showed

The model, the coding assistant and the hardware partnership together sketch where a large model vendor was putting its effort: turning general model ability into tools for particular jobs, extending that ability from text to images and video, and pairing the software with computing hardware ^[1][2]. The release also left something checkable behind. Whether the two 30% figures hold up in ordinary use is the kind of claim users can test for themselves ^[3].