Alibaba wants a copilot as China scrutinizes generative AI

The world’s two largest economies have raced to demonstrate their generative AI capabilities in recent months. ChatGPT, Midjourney, the new Bing, and others have tens of millions of users worldwide. Chinese entrepreneurs strive to match American ones. Baidu launched ChatGPT-like software.

Alibaba, another Chinese tech giant, unveiled its latest generative AI effort today, which is similar to Microsoft’s Copilot, which uses AI to make using the giant’s family of apps easier by letting people use natural language to describe what they want to build.

Alibaba announced Tuesday that its large language model, Tongyi Qianwen, will be integrated across its businesses to improve user experience. The model lets customers and developers create customized AI features.

The Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing giant offers food delivery, video streaming, ecommerce, enterprise communication, and flight booking. Alibaba’s announcement suggests these services are ready for AI disruption.

Two company apps use natural language. In a pre-recorded demo, Alibaba showed how its Slack-like workplace chat app Dingtalk uses Tongyi Qianwen to summarize chat history, create corporate culture slogans, write meeting minutes, and convert handwritten charts to mini apps. The announcement stated that Alibaba’s premium online retailer’s smart voice assistant, Tmall Genie, will incorporate the LLM.

“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 Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

“As a leading global cloud computing service provider, Alibaba Cloud is committed to making computing and AI services more accessible and inclusive for enterprises and developers, enabling them to uncover more insights, explore new business models for growth, and create more cutting-edge products and services for society.”

Alibaba’s AI-powered products haven’t been released yet, so it’s too early to judge their quality. However, AI use across internet services is limited.

On the same day Alibaba announced its ambitious AI moves, China’s top internet watchdog released draft regulations to regulate how tech companies serve users with generative AI models. The proposed rules followed previous AI regulations. The new draft measures require AI service providers to register their algorithms with the internet authority, verify users’ identities, and record data input, such as AI prompts.