AI: China’s Alibaba is launching a ChatGPT competitor

Alibaba, a leading provider of technology in China, has revealed intentions to release Tongyi Qianwen, a product with artificial intelligence (AI) that is similar to ChatGPT.

The company’s cloud computing division says it would incorporate the chatbot into all of Alibaba’s companies in the “near future,” although it did not provide a date.

Global IT firms have recently debuted their own “generative AI chatbots” in recent months.

Alibaba stated that it was developing a ChatGPT competitor earlier this year.

The term Tongyi Qianwen loosely translates to “seeking an answer by posing a thousand questions,” yet Alibaba has not provided an English translation of the moniker.

As Tongyi Qianwen was introduced, Daniel Zhang, chairman and chief executive of Alibaba, stated that “we are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing.”

The business announced that Tongyi Qianwen, which can operate in both Chinese and English, will initially be introduced to DingTalk, Alibaba’s office messaging app.

According to the firm, it will carry out a variety of activities, such as recording verbal exchanges at meetings for later writing down, composing emails, and creating business proposals.

The Tmall Genie smart speaker, which is comparable to Amazon’s Alexa speech assistant, will also incorporate it, according to Alibaba.

Since the November release of ChatGPT by OpenAI, which is supported by Microsoft, interest in generative AI has increased.

With the help of historical data, generative AI may produce text that is nearly indistinguishable from that of a human author.

Using the internet as it was in 2021 as its database, ChatGPT can respond to inquiries in language that is natural and human-like and can imitate different writing styles.

Microsoft invested countless dollars in the technology, which was incorporated into its Bing search engine in February.

The US software behemoth also announced that ChatGPT will be integrated into its Office suite of programs, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, and Baidu, a Chinese technology company, have both announced the launching of identical chatbots with their own AI models.

Draft regulations for controlling generative AI were released on Tuesday by China’s cyberspace authority.

The Cyberspace Administration of China stated that under the proposed regulations, businesses would be in charge of ensuring the reliability of the data used to train the technology.

The public can comment on the plans until 10 May.

A group of prominent tech industry professionals demanded last month that the development of potent AI systems be put on hold due to concerns that they could pose a threat to humans.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, and Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, are among those who signed an open letter highlighting potential dangers and claiming that the race to develop AI systems has gotten out of hand.

Meanwhile, according to a recent projection from the investment bank Goldman Sachs, AI might eventually replace 300 million full-time employment.

The country’s data-protection body cited privacy concerns earlier this month when Italy became the first Western country to restrict ChatGPT.