Star Market Daily reports that tech titan Alibaba is recruiting companies to test its Tongyi Qianwen AI chatbot, joining the race to replicate the explosive success of ChatGPT.
The no-cost-to-use ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) application developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, was made available to the public in November 2017 and is capable of generating articles and essays in response to user requests.
Alibaba has opened registration for businesses to test its artificial intelligence application, according to an unspecified report.
A source with knowledge of the situation verified to Reuters that the application was an LLM designed for business users.
The cloud computing division of Alibaba posted a teaser on social media on Friday with the message, “Welcome, my name is Tongyi Qianwen, this is our first meeting, and I invite your feedback.”
The official website for the chatbot application contains only text fields for entering phone numbers and email addresses in order to request an invitation, but provides no other information.
Alibaba Cloud did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via email.
On Tuesday, an official launch is anticipated at an Alibaba Cloud event. Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba Group and the cloud division of the corporation, is scheduled to speak at the event.
Baidu Inc. has also joined the AI chatbot competition with its Ernie Bot application, which is currently only available to trial users.
On Saturday, Huawei Technologies will unveil Pangu, its natural language processing (NLP) artificial intelligence (AI) model.
Next week, SenseTime will also host an event to demonstrate “recent advances in artificial intelligence software.”
Alibaba announced last week that it will reorganize into six independent divisions, each with its own board and CEO. Zhang will continue to serve as CEO of the cloud division.