Alibaba, a massive internet company in China, has announced that they would be releasing a product called Tongyi Qianwen, which is modeled after the popular ChatGPT.
The cloud computing division of Alibaba has stated that the chatbot will be implemented company-wide in the “near future,” albeit no specifics of when this would occur have been provided.
Many IT firms have released their own “generative AI chatbots” in recent months.
In January of this year, Alibaba said that it was developing a product to compete with ChatGPT. Tongyi Qianwen means “finding an answer by asking a thousand inquiries,” although Alibaba has not provided an English translation of the name.
After Tongyi Qianwen was introduced, Alibaba’s chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang noted, “We are at a technological watershed moment powered by generative AI and cloud computing.” Tongyi Qianwen, which can communicate in both English and Chinese, will be integrated into Alibaba’s DingTalk workplace messaging app first, the business announced.
Alibaba will increase the utility of ChatGPT
The startup claims it will be able to do things like take notes at meetings, compose emails, and create business proposals.
Tmall Genie, Alibaba’s version of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant smart speaker, will also feature the integration, the company said.
Interest in generative AI has grown following the publication of ChatGPT by Microsoft-backed OpenAI in November. Generative AI is capable of learning from past data to create content indistinguishable from human labour.
ChatGPT can answer queries using natural, human-like English and it can also mimic various writing styles, using the internet as it was in 2021 as its database. The technology, which was integrated into Microsoft’s Bing search engine in February, cost the company billions of dollars.
The American software giant also announced it would integrate ChatGPT into its Office suite of products. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Similar AI models and chatbots have been announced and released by Alphabet’s Google and the Chinese technology firm Baidu.
China’s cyberspace regulator released guidelines for handling generative AI on Tuesday. According to the Cyberspace Administration of China, enterprises will be liable for the veracity of data used to train the technology under the new regulations.
There will be a public comment period on the plans until May 10th. Last month, a number of prominent figures in the IT industry urged a halt to the development of advanced AI systems due to security concerns.
The open letter, which was signed by prominent figures such as Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, warns of the dangers of an AI arms race. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs predicted that AI would eliminate the need for 300 million human workers worldwide.
This month, Italy made history by becoming the first Western government to ban ChatGPT due to privacy concerns.
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