Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing division of the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, announced on Tuesday that it will launch its own ChatGPT-like product, Tongyi Qianwen.
This new AI product, which supports both Chinese and English languages, will first be deployed on DingTalk, Alibaba’s workplace communication software, and Tmall Genie, a provider of smart home appliances, according to the company’s release.
Following the announcement, Alibaba’s shares, listed in Hong Kong, rose by over 3% but have since seen some of those gains diminish. In contrast, shares of Baidu in Hong Kong fell by 6%.
During the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit, the company stated that it plans to integrate the AI-powered chatbot into all Alibaba products, spanning from enterprise communication to e-commerce, in “the near future.” However, no specific timeline was provided.
Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, remarked, “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.”
Alibaba had first informed in February about its development of a ChatGPT competitor. The company’s new AI model will be incorporated across Alibaba’s various businesses to enhance user experience shortly.
The model will be available to the company’s customers and developers, allowing them to create customized AI features cost-effectively.
Alibaba Cloud will provide clients access to Tongyi Qianwen via the cloud and assist them in developing tailored large language models.
The chatbot will be fine-tuned with proprietary data from clients, which is expected to lower costs and resource needs for these companies. Enterprise customers in China will have the opportunity to participate in beta testing of Tongyi Qianwen.
Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, stated, “We hope to assist businesses from all industries with their intelligence transformation, ultimately boosting their productivity, expanding their expertise, and unlocking exciting opportunities through innovations.”
Developers in China are also invited to apply for beta testing of Tongyi Qianwen to create scalable AI applications, according to the company.
The model will soon feature enhanced AI capabilities, such as image understanding and text-to-image functionality. Alibaba joins other Chinese tech giants like Baidu and NetEase in revealing ChatGPT-style products. Baidu introduced its own ChatGPT equivalent, Ernie Bot, in March.
Alibaba has been recognized as the third leading public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider globally since 2018, as reported by International Data Corporation.
Additionally, according to Gartner, Alibaba holds the position of the world’s third-leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018.
