E-commerce
Alibaba Group announced on Wednesday that it is developing a ChatGPT-style tool that is currently undergoing internal testing, joining a race by global tech companies to show they are up to speed on developments in generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The Chinese e-commerce group’s announcement comes after the 21st Century Herald newspaper reported that Alibaba is developing a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, which is now open for testing by employees.
When asked about the newspaper report, which also said Alibaba may combine the technology with the group’s communication app DingTalk, Alibaba declined to comment.
The company said it has focused on large language models and generative AI for several years. Large language models are natural language processing systems that are trained on large volumes of text and can answer and understand questions as well as generate new text.
Alibaba’s US-listed shares rose 3.2 percent on the news.
Shares of several other Chinese AI tech companies have risen in the past few days on investor excitement over Open.Ai’s ChatGPT, which can generate articles, essays and jokes in response to prompts, and has been named the fastest-growing consumer app in Armenia. the story.
Shares in Chinese search engine giant Baidu surged 15 percent on Tuesday after it said it plans to end testing of its “Ernie bot” in March. Google owner Alphabet Inc is also planning its own chatbot service and has said it will use more artificial intelligence for its search engine.
Microsoft, which owns Open.AI, plans to tie ChatGPT to its Bing search engine.
JD.com, another Chinese technology group, said on Wednesday that it is trying to integrate some ChatGPT-like methods and technologies into some of its products, such as customer service on its e-commerce platform.
A source familiar with NetEase told Reuters that the Chinese game company plans to use similar large language model technology to serve its education business.
- Reporting by Josh Horwitz and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Twini Siu and Josh Ye in Hong Kong, Sophie Yu in Beijing; Editing by Jason Neely, Louise Havens and Jane Merriman of Reuters.