The Chinese tech giant is seeking companies to test its Tongyi Qianwen AI chatbot.
Business journal STAR Market Daily said on Friday that tech giant Alibaba is looking for organisations to test its Tongyi Qianwen AI chatbot, joining the race to copy the meteoric success of ChatGPT.
The open-source Developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) programme that can produce articles and essays on demand in response to user input. It was made available to the public in November.
Alibaba has opened up registration for companies to do tests for its AI application, according to an unspecific article from STAR Market.
Reuters received confirmation from a source close to the situation that the application was an LLM geared towards business users.
Friday saw the release of a teaser by Alibaba’s cloud computing division, which sent a message on social media with the simple statement: “Hello, my name is Tongyi Qianwen, this is our first time meeting, I welcome your feedback.”
The chatbot application’s official website only contains places to enter phone numbers and email addresses to request an invitation; it gives no specifics about how it would be used.
A request for comment sent through email was not immediately answered by Alibaba Cloud.
At an Alibaba Cloud event on Tuesday, a formal launch is anticipated. The event will feature a speech from Daniel Zhang, the CEO of the cloud division of the Alibaba Group.
Baidu, whose Ernie Bot programme is now only available to trial customers, is one of the other companies that have entered the AI chatbot competition.
The natural language processing (NLP) AI model Pangu is scheduled to be unveiled at an event on Saturday by network equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies.
Additionally, SenseTime is hosting a demonstration of “leading-edge developments in AI software” the following week.
Alibaba revealed this week that it would split into six independent entities, each with its own board and CEO. Zhang will continue in his role as CEO of the cloud division.