Alibaba rolls out its competitor ChatGPT across all of its products

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, announced on Tuesday that it will release its ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen.

Tongyi Qianwen, which has both Chinese and English language capabilities, will initially be deployed on DingTalk, a workplace communication software from Alibaba, and Tmall Genie, a provider of smart home devices, the company said in a statement.

At the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit, the company said it will roll out its AI-powered chatbot in all of Alibaba’s products from enterprise communications to e-commerce in the “near future.” It did not disclose a timeline.

“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and companies across all sectors are beginning to embrace intelligent transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of the Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud. Intelligence in a statement.

Alibaba first told CNBC that it was working on a ChatGPT competitor in February.

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

Alibaba is the latest Chinese player after Baidu to reveal alternatives to ChatGPT. Baidu unveiled its own ChatGPT version, Ernie Bot, in March.

Chinese tech giants from Alibaba to Baidu to NetEase have announced their intention to launch ChatGPT-style products.

Alibaba has maintained its position as the third leading public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider globally since 2018, according to the International Data Corporation.

The tech company is also the world’s third-leading IaaS provider in the Asia-Pacific region by revenue in US dollars since 2018, according to technology research firm Gartner.