Alibaba unveils Tongyi Qianwen, an AI model similar to GPT

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Tuesday unveiled Tongyi Qianwen, an AI large language model similar to GPT that it plans to integrate into all of the company's business applications in the near future.

It will first be integrated into DingTalk, Alibaba's workplace messaging app and can be used to summarise meeting notes, write emails and draft business proposals. It will also be added to Tmall Genie, Alibaba's voice assistant.

"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," CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement.

Shares in Alibaba rose 3% in morning trade.

Alibaba Cloud plans to open Tongyi Qianwen to its clients so they can build their own customized large language models.

Global interest in generative AI, which learns how to take actions from past data to create new content, has surged since the release of chatbot sensation ChatGPT by Microsoft-backed OpenAI late last year.

Others including Alphabet Inc's Google and Baidu Inc have since promoted their AI models and released similar chatbots.

Tongyi Qianwen is based on Tongyi, Alibaba's proprietary pre-trained model framework that unifies various AI models.