Tuesday saw the launch of Alibabas Tongyi Qianwen, an internal product of Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing division of Chinese internet giant Alibaba. According to a press statement from the firm, Tongyi Qianwen, which can speak both Chinese and English, will initially be used on DingTalk, Alibaba’s office communication software, and Tmall Genie, a seller of smart home equipment.
Shares Climbing Up
After the announcement, Alibaba’s shares that are listed in Hong Kong increased by more than 3%, albeit they have subsequently given back some of those gains. Shares of Baidu fell 6% in Hong Kong.
The business announced at the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit that it would “shortly” integrate an AI-powered chatbot into every Alibabas Tongyi Qianwen product, from e-commerce to enterprise communication. A timetable was not made available.
According to Daniel Zhang, chairman, and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibabas ChatGPT Cloud Intelligence, “We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game.”
Bespoke AI Capabilities
“In the near future, the new AI model will be implemented throughout Alibaba’s many businesses to enhance user experience. Customers and developers of the company would have access to the model to efficiently construct bespoke AI capabilities, the company claimed.
Tongyi Qianwen will be accessible to clients of Alibaba Cloud, who can use it to create specialized large language models. The chatbot will be “fine-tuned” with confidential data and client data, saving these businesses money and resources. Chinese enterprise users of Alibaba Cloud will have access to Alibabas Tongyi Qianwen for beta testing.
According to Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in the press release, “We hope to support businesses from all industries with their intelligence transformation and, ultimately, help boost their business productivity, expand their expertise and capabilities while unlocking more exhilarating opportunities through innovations.”