Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is now allowing corporate customers to test out its ChatGPT-style AI chatbot.
The "Tongyi Qianwen" model recently underwent internal testing at Damo
Academy, Alibaba's research institute for advanced technologies.
- The name, "Tongyi Qianwen," translates roughly to "Truth from a Thousand Questions," according to Bloomberg.
- A Chinese website for the model describes it as a "productivity assistant and idea generator" that responds to user commands using a large language model.
- The site lets customers request an invitation to try out the service.
- Because the site is in Chinese only, reports speculated that Tongyi Qianwen might only process queries in that language.
- More details are expected during a formal launch at Alibaba's Cloud Summit event on Tuesday.
- Huawei, SenseTime, and other Chinese tech giants are also gearing up to introduce AI chatbots and other tools in the coming days to compete against ChatGPT's dominance.
- Last month, Chinese search engine giant Baidu unveiled its latest Ernie chatbot with capabilities nearly on par with GPT-4. It is also being offered on an invite-only basis.
