Alibaba, a global leader in technology, has revealed a new artificial intelligence product that will soon be incorporated into all of the company's apps and is similar to ChatGPT.
Earlier this year, Alibaba revealed it was developing a ChatGPT competitor to the immensely popular AI chatbot.
Alibaba Cloud, the company's cloud computing division, revealed on Tuesday that it would be releasing a generative AI model called Tongyi Qianwen (TQ), which stands for "truth from a thousand questions."
In an initial product demonstration, the AI model was seen scheduling travel plans, writing invitations, and advising customers on make-up purchases.
The company announced that the TQ rollout will start with a deployment on Tmall Genie, the company's Alexa-like voice assistant, and DingTalk, Alibaba's office communication and collaboration software.
The device has the ability to write emails, create business proposals, and summarise meeting notes in both Chinese and English.
Alibaba claimed that by using the voice assistant Tmall Genie, the product can have "more dynamic and vivid conversations" with users in China. Specifically, TQ can give users vacation tips, healthy diet recipes, and "develop and tell stories to children."
Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang stated at a webcast event that the new technology would "bring about big changes to the way we produce, the way we work, and the way we live our lives."
"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,” stated Zhang.
"As a leading global cloud computing service provider, Alibaba Cloud is committed to making computing and AI services more accessible and inclusive for enterprises and developers," he added.
The company stated the AI model will be incorporated into "all business applications across Alibaba's ecosystem in the near future," though it did not give a specific timeline for the TQ implementation.
China's new AI regulations
The launch of Alibaba's AI product coincides with the release of recently-drafted AI regulations from China's cyber space authority.
The Cyberspace Administration of China presented steps for controlling generative AI on Tuesday, mandating that creators of new AI products submit to security evaluations before making them available to the general public.
According to the draft law, information produced by upcoming AI products must uphold the nation's "core socialist values" and refrain from inciting subversion of the rule of law.
Additionally, it outlined guidelines forbidding AI material from endorsing racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination and specified that AI content shouldn't spread misinformation.
In a frenetic battle for market supremacy, tech behemoths from all over the world have recently begun creating and selling generative AI technologies.
While initiatives from Meta, Microsoft, and Google have been unveiled to varying degrees of acclaim, ChatGPT has continued to make quick advancements to its ground-breaking AI language model.
A contentious request was made earlier this month for major tech firms to comply with a six-month moratorium on "out-of-control" AI development.
The broad expansion of AI has sparked growing concerns about the technology's potential ethical and economic implications. In response, over 1,300 academics, tech experts, and business professionals signed an open letter supported by Elon Musk encouraging AI companies to limit development in late March.
A ban against ChatGPT has been issued by Italy, the first Western nation to do so, after the nation's privacy agency expressed worries about the AI chatbot's data privacy practises. Meanwhile, an Australian mayor may file the first lawsuit over ChatGPT's errors.
Alibaba's cloud division hopes to make TQ AI available to customers so they may create their own unique language models, and the business has already announced plans to include additional features including picture processing and text-to-image synthesis.
Beta testing of TQ is currently available for mainstream enterprise customers in China.
