Alibaba climbs on AI bandwagon

Photo taken on July 3, 2020 shows the research center of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on the "AIsland" of Zhangjiang Science City in Pudong New Area, east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. unveiled its artificial intelligence-powered large language model, Tongyi Qianwen, joining the chatbot race with a potential rival to ChatGPT, China Daily reported Wednesday.

"We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligent transformation to stay ahead of the game," Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Alibaba began researching large language models in 2019. The new product will initially be deployed on DingTalk, the company's workplace messaging app, to summarize meeting notes, create poetry, write emails and draft business proposals, according to the report.

Leading Chinese tech firms, including Baidu Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and NetEase, have jumped on the AI chatbot bandwagon.

Alibaba's unveiling came one day after Chinese AI pioneer SenseTime launched its latest set of large AI models "SenseNova," which cover key capabilities including computer vision, natural language processing and AI-generated content, the newspaper said.

Baidu rolled out its large language model and ChatGPT-like product dubbed Ernie Bot last month, it added.

China's cyberspace regulator Tuesday unveiled draft measures for managing generative AI services. Providers will be responsible for the legitimacy of data used to train generative AI products, and measures should be taken to prevent discriminatory content when designing algorithms, training data and generating models, and when providing services, the report said, citing the draft released to solicit public views.