Alibaba will launch its rival to ChatGPT across all its products

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, announced on Tuesday that it will roll out its own ChatGPT product Tongyi Qianwen.

Tongyi Qianwen, who has Chinese and English language skills, will initially be deployed on DingTalk, Alibaba̵[ads1]7;s workplace communication software, and Tmall Genie, a provider of smart home appliances, the company said in a release.

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Hong Kong-listed shares of Ali Baba steg traded more than 3% higher after the announcement, but has since pared some gains. Shares of Baidu in Hong Kong decreased 6%.

At the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit, the company said it will roll out the AI-powered chatbot to all Alibaba products from business communications to e-commerce in the “near future.” It revealed no timeline.

“We are at a technological watershed driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have begun to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO and CEO in Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a statement.

Alibaba first told CNBC it was working on a ChatGPT rival in February.

“The new AI model will be integrated across Alibaba’s various businesses to improve the user experience in the near future. The company’s customers and developers will have access to the model to create custom AI functions in a cost-effective manner,” the company said.

Alibaba Cloud will offer its customers access to Tongyi Qianwen on the cloud and help them build customized large language models.

The chatbot will be “fine-tuned” with proprietary information and data from clients, reducing resources and costs for these companies. Alibaba Cloud’s enterprise customers in China will have access to Tongyi Qianwen for beta testing.

“We hope to facilitate enterprises from all industries with their intelligence transformation and ultimately help increase enterprise productivity, expand their expertise and capabilities while unlocking more exciting opportunities through innovations,” said Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in the release .

Developers in China can also apply for beta testing by Tongyi Qianwen to create their AI applications at scale, the company said.

Users can expect “more compelling” AI features such as image understanding and text-to-image to be added to the Tongyi Qianwen model soon.

Alibaba is the latest Chinese player after Baidu to unveil ChatGPT alternatives. Baidu revealed its own ChatGPT version, Ernie Bot, in March.

Chinese tech giants from Alibaba to Baidu to NetEase have announced their intentions to launch ChatGPT-style products.

Alibaba has maintained its position as the third leading provider of public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) globally since 2018, according to International Data Corporation.

The technology company also holds the positions of the world’s third-leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in US dollars since 2018, according to technology research firm Gartner.