Chinese-based tech giant Alibaba is all set to launch Tongyi Qianwen, a one-of-a-kind artificial intelligence (AI) product similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company’s computing unit stated that they are planning to integrate the chatbot in all businesses.
Alibaba has not disclosed the details of the launch. As AI is conquering the era of technology, several firms have introduced their own AI chatbots.
The term ‘Tongyi Qianwen’ translates as “seeking an answer by asking a thousand questions”.
“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing,” said Daniel Zhang, Chairman of Alibaba. However, the firm stated the chatbot will be added to Alibaba’s messaging app for workspace, DingTalk. It would perform numerous tasks such as writing emails, drafting proposals, and taking minutes of meetings.
Moreover, it will be integrated into Tmall Genie, which is similar to Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant.
Since OpenAI released the AI-based ChatGPT in November last year, the generative AI industry has witnessed a sudden surge. In simple terms, Generative AI is a type of AI technology that can learn data that is fed to create machine-based content through text prompts. Other examples of Generative AI could be DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion which allow users to generate images through text prompts.
However, ChatGPT smoothly answers questions that are fed to it – in human-like language – making it hard to differentiate between something that’s written by humans. Tech giant Microsoft has spent a fortune on this innovative AI, making it a feature on their renowned search engine Bing this year.
It is said that the company would install a version of ChatGPT in its famous Office apps such as Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint.
Chinese cyber regulators announced draft measures to manage and tackle the harm that comes with generative AI. As AI has made lives easier, the disadvantages don’t stop there. When content is easily available, it can be a source of discriminatory biases, misinformation, and hate speech.
The Cyberspace Administration of China laid rules which propose that firms that would adopt generative AI would be responsible for the accuracy of data that would be used to train the AI. The regulators have given a timeline until May 10 to the citizens for their feedback.
Many critics and tech enthusiasts have debated how continued training of generative AI has to be suspended, as it can be a potential threat to humanity.
One of the famous personalities behind this idea is none other than Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, Co-founder at Apple who signed an open letter that warns of the potential harm amidst the race of generative AI. There have been several discussions about whether AI could replace humans in the race. Recently, Goldman Sachs launched a report which stated that AI could replace up to 300 million full-time jobs. Calling it a ‘major advancement’, AI could potentially replace a quarter of work tasks in countries such as the US and Europe.
The good side? It may also be opening doors to create more jobs, adding to productivity factors as well.
As many countries believe that generative AI is the future, Italy stands on the opposite side of the door. The Western nation blocked OpenAI’s ChatGPT to secure the country’s data and address privacy concerns. As the grass is greener on the other side, only time will tell on what holds the future for generative AI.