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IMAGE MODELby Alibaba Tongyi LabApache 2.0#1 open-source

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Z Image Turbo

Alibaba’s ultra-fast, open-source image model — 8-step distilled generation, bilingual English and Chinese text rendering, and photorealistic quality at approximately 4× the speed of FLUX. Ranked #1 among open-source models on the Artificial Analysis Text-to-Image Leaderboard.

Parameters
6.15 Billion
Inference steps
8 steps
Resolution
Up to 2048×2048
Released
November 2025
Zimageturbo 3

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Built for speed without sacrificing quality

Z Image Turbo is built on S3-DiT (Scalable Single-Stream Diffusion Transformer) — a unified architecture where text, visual semantic, and image tokens are processed in a single stream rather than dual-stream models like FLUX. Combined with Decoupled-DMD distillation, generation is compressed to just 8 steps with no classifier-free guidance required, delivering results approximately 4× faster than FLUX.2 Dev at comparable or better quality.

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Capabilities

Photorealistic output

Photography-grade quality with accurate lighting, shadows, and fine material detail. Performs at or above models with 5× more parameters.

World knowledge grounding

Accurately renders named landmarks, cultural references, and recognizable figures — drawing on Alibaba’s Qwen3-4B text encoder for depth.

Prompt enhancement

Built-in structured reasoning chains expand and refine prompts automatically for richer, more coherent outputs from short instructions.
Z Image Turbo exampleZ Image Turbo example

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Specifications

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Benchmarks

Z Image Turbo was evaluated against leading proprietary and open-source models:
Z Image Turbo exampleZ Image Turbo example

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How to use

1

Open the AI Image Generator

Go to the ImagineArt AI Image Generator.
2

Select the model

From the model dropdown, choose Z Image Turbo.
3

Write your prompt

Write a clear, focused prompt. Z Image Turbo responds best to precise, concise descriptions — overly long prompts can add noise rather than detail.
4

Set your resolution

Choose from 512×512 up to 2048×2048. The model performs consistently across the full resolution range.
5

Generate

Click Generate. At 8 steps, results arrive significantly faster than most other models.

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Prompting tips

  • Keep prompts concise and specific — Z Image Turbo is optimized for structured, precise prompts. Dense, paragraph-length prompts can reduce coherence rather than improve it.
  • For bilingual text in images — Include both the English and Chinese text you want rendered, with explicit placement: “A product banner with bold red text reading ‘Summer Sale’ and ‘夏季特卖’ below it.”
  • Avoid high CFG values — The model was trained at guidance scale 0.0. Using high CFG in manual configurations introduces artifacts. Leave guidance at default.
  • Use prompt enhancement — Enable the built-in prompt enhancer for short or abstract prompts. It applies Alibaba’s structured reasoning to expand your intent into richer descriptions.

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Example prompts

A Japanese ramen shop at night, warm amber light spilling from the windows onto rain-wet cobblestones, steam rising from bowls inside, photorealistic, cinematic composition.
A product flatlay of a wireless speaker on brushed concrete, minimalist studio lighting, crisp shadow, commercial photography style.
A bold event poster with “OPEN MIC NIGHT” in large neon-style lettering and “每周五 / Every Friday” beneath it, dark urban background.

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Compare models

Z Image Turbo is developed by Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab under the Apache 2.0 license. It outperforms models with 5× more parameters — including FLUX.2 Dev (32B) — on several benchmarks, making it one of the most efficient high-quality image models available.