Hugging Face Launches Gradio 5: Simplifying AI-Powered Web App Development

Gradio 5 is here: Hugging Face's newest tool simplifies building AI-powered web apps

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Hugging Face, the fast-growing AI startup valued at about $4.5 billion, has launched Gradio 5, a major update to its popular open-source tool for creating machine learning applications. The new version aims to make AI development more accessible, potentially speeding up enterprise adoption of machine learning technologies. Gradio, which Hugging Face acquired in 2021, has quickly become a cornerstone of the company's offerings. With over 2 million monthly users and more than 470,000 applications built on the platform, Gradio has emerged as a key player in the AI development ecosystem. Bridging the gap: Python proficiency meets web development ease The latest version aims to bridge the gap between machine learning expertise and web development skills. "Machine learning developers are very comfortable programming in Python, and oftentimes, less so with the nuts and bolts of web development," explained Abubakar Abid, Founder of Gradio, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. "Gradio lets developers build performant, scalable apps that follow best practices in security and accessibility, all in just a few lines of Python." One of the most notable features of Gradio 5 is its focus on enterprise-grade security. Abid highlighted this aspect, telling VentureBeat, "We hired Trail of Bits, a well-known cybersecurity company, to do an independent audit of Gradio, and included fixes for all the issues that they found in Gradio 5... For Gradio developers, the key benefit is that your Gradio 5 apps will, out-of-the-box, follow best practices in web security, even if you are not an expert in web security yourself." AI-assisted app creation: Enhancing development with natural language prompts The release also introduces an experimental AI Playground, allowing developers to generate and preview Gradio apps using natural language prompts. Ahsen Khaliq, ML Growth Lead at Gradio, emphasized the importance of this feature, saying, "Similar to other AI coding environments, you can enter a text prompt explaining what kind of app you want to build and an LLM will turn it into Gradio code. But unlike other coding environments, you can also see an instant preview of your Gradio app and run it in the browser." This innovation could dramatically reduce the time and expertise needed to create functional AI applications, potentially making AI development more accessible to a wider range of businesses and developers. Gradio's position in the AI ecosystem is becoming increasingly central. "Once a model is available on a hub like the Hugging Face Hub or downloaded locally, developers can wrap it into a web app using Gradio in a few lines of code," Khaliq explained. This flexibility has led to Gradio being used in notable projects like Chatbot Arena, Open NotebookLM, and Stable Diffusion. Future-proofing enterprise AI: Gradio's roadmap for innovation The launch of Gradio 5 comes at a time when enterprise adoption of AI is accelerating. By simplifying the process of creating production-ready AI applications, Hugging Face is positioning itself to capture a significant share of this growing market. Looking ahead, Abid hinted at ambitious plans for Gradio: "Many of the changes we've made in Gradio 5 are designed to enable new functionality that we will be shipping in the coming weeks... Stay tuned for: multi-page Gradio apps, navbars and sidebars, support for running Gradio apps on mobile using PWA and potentially native app support, more built-in components to support new modalities that are emerging around images and video, and much more." As AI continues to impact various industries, tools like Gradio 5 that connect advanced technology with practical business applications are likely to play a vital role. With this release, Hugging Face is not just updating a product -- it's potentially altering the landscape of enterprise AI development.

Hugging Face makes AI development easier than ever with Gradio 5 release - SiliconANGLE

Hugging Face makes AI development easier than ever with Gradio 5 release Artificial intelligence startup Hugging Face Inc. is looking to break down barriers to AI development with the launch of Gradio 5, the latest version of its open-source tool for building machine learning applications. The latest version of Gradio is all about easing access to AI development, and includes an entirely new, AI-powered app creation tool, additional features for web development, and a stronger security focus. Hugging Face operates a popular platform for hosting open-source machine learning projects. In some ways, it's similar to the GitHub platform that stores the basic code for millions of enterprise and open-source applications, only it's focused more specifically on AI models. It stores the underlying code for more than 1.3 million AI models, including large language models that power generative AI. It also hosts more than 450,000 training datasets and other technical assets. Acting as a kind of nerve center for AI, Hugging Face has emerged as a key player in the industry and not surprisingly, it counts several major tech firms among its investors, including Nvidia Corp., which joined the company's most recent $235 million funding round. The company acquired Gradio back in 2021, and used that startup's technology as the foundation of its own development studio. It has grown to become one of the key aspects of its AI platform, with more than two million monthly users and over 470,000 apps built on it to date. With today's launch of Gradio 5, Hugging Face has introduced an experimental "AI Playground" that makes it simple to create and preview AI apps using only natural language prompts. As Hugging Face's Abubakar Abid, who founded Gradio, explains in an interview with VentureBeat, it's similar to other no-code or low-code app building environments, in that you can simply enter a text prompt describing the kind of application you want to build, and it will understand that request and transform it into Gradio code. Where it differs from other environments is it will go further, enabling users to generate an instant, web-based preview of their apps and run it in their web browser. It's a key innovation for Hugging Face, and given the startup's key role in the AI ecosystem, it's one that promises to kick open the doors to AI app development for citizen developers, while dramatically reducing the time it takes to build new apps for experienced users. One of the main advantages of building an app in Gradio's platform is that it's directly integrated with Hugging Face's AI model hub. So as soon as a model has been uploaded into its repository, developers can take it to Gradio and use it to power a new web application with just a few lines of code - and now, just a few spoken commands. Another key area of focus with the Gradio 5 release is on bridging the gap between machine learning developers and web development, the company said. According to Abid, most machine learning developers are very proficient in using the Python programming language, but somewhat less so when it comes to actual web development, which is more reliant on a different set of programming languages and tools. "Gradio lets developers build performant, scalable apps that follow best practices in security and accessibility, all in just a few lines of Python," Abid told VentureBeat. In addition, Gradio 5's security features have been enhanced, bringing it closer to what Abid term's "enterprise-grade". He explained that the company hired the cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits Inc. to perform an independent audit of Gradio's new codebase that covered all of the fixes it introduced for problems it had already identified itself. Abid added that the latest version of Gradio is really just a work in progress, as the company is working to add plenty more features and functionalities in the coming weeks and months, including mobile support, multi-page Gradio apps, sidebars, navbars and support for new modalities around images and video.