Chinese tech giant, Alibaba, is reportedly ready to launch its large-scale model next week at the Alibaba Cloud Summit, which is to be held on April 11 in Beijing. A source from the firm’s cloud unit confirmed to TechNode the summit’s date and hinted at the prospect of introducing a ChatGPT-style tool model as well as a broader industry application model at the event. This news follows closely with the release of search giant Baidu’s chatbot service ERNIEBot and large model platform targeting the enterprise sector last March.
Alibaba has been actively investing in cloud computing since 2009 and the possible introduction of an AI chatbot technology model could strengthen their hold in the industry. A report from February indicated that the firm had already been working on a ChatGPT-like tool and had been conducting internal testing. The growing popularity of ChatGPT amongst Chinese tech majors and AI entrepreneurs only adds an extra layer of excitement in the anticipation of Alibaba’s upcoming reveal.
Chinese AI expert Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of Google China, and Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen have both left their tech giant roles to form new AI businesses, further showing the potential of ChatGPT in the area. The rest of the AI community eagerly awaits the reveal of Alibaba’s large-scale model and its potential implications for the Chinese tech industry.
