China's Alibaba set to launch Tongyi Qianwen, a home-grown rival to ChatGPT

Chinese tech giant Alibaba teased the debut of Tongyi Qianwen, a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that is ready to take on the renowned AI chatbot ChatGPT and other rivals in face of growing competition. On Tuesday, the company's cloud computing unit announced that it would soon be launching its own ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen, which will come with the ability to perform tasks in Chinese and English.

For the initial stages, the model will be deployed on Alibaba’s workplace communication software DingTalk and Tmall Genie, a provider of smart home appliances. The announcement was made on Tuesday, the day of the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit. During the event, the company revealed its goals of incorporating the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot into all its products and services in “the near future," but did not give a definite timeline into it. 

“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,” said Alibaba Group CEO and chairman Daniel Zhang, according to CNBC.

Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen to improve user experience

“The new AI model will be integrated across Alibaba’s various businesses to improve user experience in the near future. The company’s customers and developers will have access to the model to create customised AI features in a cost-effective way,” the company said.

“We hope to facilitate businesses from all industries with their intelligence transformation and, ultimately, help boost their business productivity, expand their expertise and capabilities while unlocking more exciting opportunities through innovations,” Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said in a press release.

The Tongyi Qianwen model will soon be equipped with “more compelling” AI features like text-to-image and better image understanding. Alibaba first revealed that a ChatGPT rival was in the works back in February. With Tongyi Qianwen, Alibaba has joined the race between Chinese firms to come up with AI chatbots that can challenge OpenAI's ChatGPT. Alibaba's new AI model comes weeks after tech company Baidu unveiled Ernie Bot, which kicked off on a rocky start without a live preview feature.