Grace Ashiru
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT, everyone has been trying to build the best AI system quickly. Big computer companies in the U.S. are trying to make their systems, and Chinese companies aren’t about to let them steal the show.
Alibaba Group just entered the race for the top spot with “Tongyi Qianwen,” a ChatGPT-style AI model that competes with Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard. It looks like they’ve been working on this since 2017, and in February of this year, they made a statement about it.
Tongyi Qianwen means “the truth from a thousand questions.”
It will be the second Chinese company to launch its version of the technology. In March, Baidu’s AI language model, Ernie Bot, was revealed in a prerecorded launch that left investors with a bad taste in their mouths.
Like GPT, the large language model Tongyi Qianwen is said to be able to have conversations in both Chinese and English. It is also said to be able to summarize meeting notes, write emails, and put together business proposals.
The AI model will first be added to the company’s office messaging app, DingTalk. It will also be added to Tmall Genie, its voice assistant, and later integrated into other business apps to help streamline business operations.
Its cloud computing division, Alibaba Cloud, is also planning to make Tongyi Qianwen available to its clients so they can build their own customized big language models. This will give them more control over their AI technology solutions.
Alibaba’s move into the market for big language models is likely to make the market more competitive and spur more innovation in the industry.
