China's Alibaba Joins AI Race To Challenge ChatGPT

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Open AI’s ChatGPT platform gathered 100 million active users in just four months, launching an all-out “arms race” between Internet giants Microsoft, Google, Baidu and Alibaba. There is no doubt that Apple is lurking in the shadows. Hundreds of app developers are already licensing the ChatGPT API to build related consumer and business products. ⁃ TN Editor

Alibaba is the latest tech giant to wade into artificial intelligence chatbots by developing a tool like ChatGPT.

It joins Microsoft, Google, and Baidu in doing so amid heightened interest in generative AI technology in 2023.

Investors in Alibaba (ticker: BABA) may be cheering the Chinese tech giant’s decision to develop a public-facing AI chatbot, with shares in the group jumping 2% in U.S. premarket trading.

Alibaba has developed and is currently putting a ChatGPT-style tool through internal testing, the company said Wednesday.

“Frontier innovations such as large language models and generative AI have been our focused areas since the formation of DAMO [investment for research & development] in 2017,” an Alibaba spokesperson said. “As a technology leader, we will continue to invest in turning cutting-edge innovations into value-added applications for our customers as well as their end-users through cloud services.”

DAMO is Alibaba’s “Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook,” launched in 2017 with the goal of investing more than $15 billion in research and development across the next three years. Like Baidu, Alibaba is a legacy Chinese tech giant that is increasingly pivoting to high-growth areas that are exposed to AI. At its core an e-commerce company, Alibaba has a booming cloud computing business, which is a segment of the group that is leading its high-tech push.

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