Alibaba Cloud hops on ChatGPT bandwagon, offers AI model to customers and developers

Alibaba Cloud is the newest vendor to hop on the ChatGPT bandwagon with a big language mannequin that it says prospects and builders will be capable of entry. 

Referred to as Tongyi Qianwen (loosely translated from Chinese language as that means from a thousand questions), the unreal intelligence (AI) mannequin additionally will energy all of Alibaba’s enterprise purposes within the “close to future”. This integration will goal to enhance consumer expertise throughout its services, spanning e-commerce, search, navigation, leisure, enterprise communication, and intelligence voice help, the Chinese language cloud vendor mentioned Tuesday. 

With each Chinese language and English language capabilities, Tongyi Qianwen first might be deployed on Alibaba’s on-line collaboration office platform DingTalk in addition to sensible voice assistant, Tmall Genie. Powered by the massive language mannequin, DingTalk will be tapped to write down e-mail and draft enterprise proposals. Customers additionally will be capable of create an app on DingTalk by taking a photograph of an thought written on a chunk of paper, in line with Alibaba.

It added that Tmall Genie can interact in “extra dynamic and vivid” conversations with customers in China, the place the product is bought. The voice assistant machine can create and inform tales to youngsters and provide weight loss program recipes.

Clients eager to entry Tongyi Qianwen to construct their very own giant language fashions can achieve this through Alibaba’s cloud platform. The AI mannequin presently is obtainable solely to the seller’s enterprise prospects in China for beta testing. 

It additionally is obtainable as an API for builders in China to beta take a look at, mentioned Alibaba, which added that the AI mannequin “quickly” might be made accessible to builders to construct their very own AI purposes for numerous verticals, akin to logistics, manufacturing, vitality, and retail. 

Additional plans are within the works so as to add multimodal capabilities, together with picture recognition and text-to-image, to Tongyi Qianwen, the cloud vendor mentioned. 

The big language mannequin runs on Tongyi, Alibaba’s pre-trained AI framework that encompasses numerous fashions, together with changing textual content to photographs and quick movies. The seller final 12 months launched a Tongyi-powered text-to-image AI mannequin, ModelScope, which presents 800 fashions. The open supply platform presently has greater than 1 million lively customers and, to this point, has clocked 16 million mannequin downloads, in line with Alibaba. 

Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang mentioned: “We’re at a technological watershed second pushed by generative AI and cloud computing, and companies throughout all sectors have began to embrace intelligence transformation to remain forward of the sport. Alibaba Cloud is dedicated to creating computing and AI providers extra accessible and inclusive for enterprises and builders, enabling them to uncover extra insights, discover new enterprise fashions for progress, and create extra cutting-edge services for society.”

Zhang, who additionally heads the corporate’s cloud enterprise, final month had confirmed Alibaba was trying to faucet generative AI, with its analysis arm Damo Academy constructing a number of fashions that builders may customise for use in content creation, spanning picture and video manufacturing. 

Alibaba final month introduced a serious overhaul of its organisational construction, splitting the corporate into six enterprise entities, every with its personal CEO who will report back to a board of administrators. 

Except for Taobao Tmall Commerce Group, which stays an entirely owned unit underneath Alibaba Group, every enterprise group can have the power to lift their very own capital and search an IPO. 

Zhang mentioned the restructure would enable the respective companies to be extra agile and empower decision-making and quicker response to market modifications. 

The six enterprise entities embody: Cloud Intelligence Group; Taobao Tmall Commerce Group; Native Providers Group; Cainiao Good Logistics; International Digital Commerce Group; and Digital Media and Leisure Group. 

Describing the transfer as probably the most important governance overhaul in Alibaba’s 24-year historical past, the Chinese language tech big mentioned the restructure would place the corporate ready to “seize market alternatives and additional stimulate progress”. 

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