Meet Tongyi Qianwen, Alibaba’s answer to ChatGPT

Photo credit: Alibaba

Alibaba Group has announced its large language model (LLM), Tongyi Qianwen, which will be integrated across Alibaba’s business functions.

According to the company’s statement, customers will also be granted access to this bilingual program, which has English and Chinese language capabilities.

Tongyi Qianwen, which will be launched on enterprise communication and collaboration platform DingTalk, includes features such as automated email writing and meeting note summarization. Users can also create promotional campaign plans and business proposal drafts through simple prompts.

The model will also enable Alibaba’s Alexa-like smart speaker Tmall Genie to “engage in more dynamic and vivid conversations with users in China,” such as by offering them healthy diet plans, workout playlists, and travel tips.

Alibaba Cloud has also given its general enterprise customers in China beta access to the LLM for customization purposes. The firm will widen access to other clients in the future.

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The firm is looking to equip the model with further capabilities and features such as text-to-image and image understanding.

Alibaba is not the only Chinese tech giant to develop a generative AI model as of late. Baidu’s Ernie and Microsoft China’s Xiaoice are among those unveiled, while ByteDance, Tencent, and NetEase are reportedly creating their own LLMs.