Most AI character tools start with a photo of a real person. You upload a face, and the model works from there. Character X, the newest feature shipping inside Alibaba's Wan creative platform, flips that assumption: it generates a completely original face from nothing, no reference photo required.

What Character X actually does

The pitch is simple. Instead of sourcing or uploading a portrait, you describe or configure what you want, and Character X produces a unique, synthetic face that belongs to no real person. Wan is an AI creative platform that aims to lower the barrier to creative work, offering features spanning text-to-image, image-to-image, text-to-video, image-to-video, and image editing. Character X adds a new entry point to that pipeline: original identity generation.

The feature is live now at the Wan Lab Playground. It is positioned for three core use cases:

• Custom avatars for personal or professional use
• Brand characters and mascots that need a consistent, ownable face
• Fictional characters for games, short-form video, or animation pipelines

The face problem Wan has been solving for months

Character X does not appear in a vacuum. Alibaba's Tongyi Lab has been systematically attacking the hardest problems in AI character work throughout the Wan series. Wan's image generation has enhanced its face customization to support all-round control from bone structure and eyes to facial features , including face shape (oval, round, square, rectangular) and eye type (almond, deep-set, round, phoenix) , achieving what the team calls "thousands of faces for thousands of people."

This is particularly useful for creating diverse character groups, virtual idols, or personalized character assets without repetitive facial features. Character X takes that further by making the face-creation step its own dedicated, zero-friction workflow rather than a sub-option buried in image generation settings.