Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA), the Chinese tech giant, said it aims to roll out its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot rival to ChatGPT into various parts of its business as it joined the list of tech giants racing to be part of what it said is the “technological watershed” of AI.
On the same day that Chinese regulators unveiled new measures for managing generative AI, the tech group unveiled its large language model, called Tongyi Qianwen.
The name translates as “truth from a thousand questions”, the company said (though ChatGPT said it means “agree to answer” in English, while Google’s Bard said the phrase means “one voice, a thousand words”).
Able to process queries in Chinese and English languages, the chatbot will first be deployed on workplace communication software DingTalk and Tmall Genie, its equivalent of Amazon’s Alexa smart home devices, the company said.
Alibaba’s chatbot launch comes after fellow Chinese tech groups Baidu and SenseTime also showed off their new AI models, following the rapid ascent of ChatGPT from US charity-turned-startup OpenAI and Google’s hastily released Bard.
Large language AI models, also known as conversational AI, are algorithms fed huge amounts of data to enable them to generate novel textual content, with the wider term of generative AI also encompassing image-creating algorithms.
With Alibaba about to be split into six independent divisions, Tongyi Qianwen will sit within the Alibaba Cloud arm, which will offer access to clients and help them customise and “fine tune” their own large language models.
“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” chairman and chief executive Daniel Zhang said.
Jingren Zhou, tech chief of Alibaba Cloud, said the company hopes to “facilitate businesses from all industries with their intelligence transformation and, ultimately, help boost their business productivity, expand their expertise and capabilities while unlocking more exciting opportunities through innovations”.
Today, the Cyberspace Administration of China unveiled proposed measures for managing generative AI services, calling for firms to submit security assessments to the authorities before they publicly launch new products.
The draft emphasises that content generated by AI must not subvert the power of the Chinese state, incite overthrowing the socialist system, secession or the destruction of national unity, local media noted.
Governments around the world are formulating policy responses to the rapidly evolving field of AI.
The UK’s last month pledged to “avoid heavy-handed legislation”, though an open letter from over a 1,000 tech executives and researchers, including OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and several top AI professors, called for a six-month pause on the developments of AI, warning of concerns over a “dangerous” arms race.
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