China’s Alibaba Also Working on ChatGPT Rival

It looks like everyone wants a piece of the AI pie. OpenAI stirred up quite the storm when it launched ChatGPT, its large language model chatbot, in November of last year, and the rest of the tech industry is now racing to bring its own alternatives to the masses.

Google announced its AI-powered conversational chatbot, dubbed “Bard,” on Monday, while Microsoft held an in-person press event on Tuesday where it unveiled ChatGPT integration for Bing, Windows, and Edge.

Even Quora has its own AI chatbot, and Chinese tech and e-commerce giant Alibaba isn’t planning on getting left out either — reports CNBC.

Alibaba told the publication on Wednesday that it is working on its own ChatGPT-like technology, adding that it is already being tested internally at the company.

The company, one of the biggest cloud computing players in China, didn’t go into detail about its plans but hinted that it could go the Microsoft route and integrate its chatbot into existing products.

“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,” said a spokesperson for Alibaba.

While Alibaba did not say when it expects to launch its ChatGPT competitor, the company said it has been working on generative AI, the category ChatGPT falls under, since 2017.

Microsoft’s implementation uses a large language model from OpenAI that the Windows maker said is even more powerful than ChatGPT and customized for search.

The news of Alibaba’s move into conversational AI had investors abuzz, with shares of the company rising 3% on the back of the announcement.

Alibaba isn’t even the only Chinese company that’s due to debut a ChatGPT competitor soon. Chinese search giant Baidu said this week that it is testing its own chatbot, called “Ernie bot” in English or “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese.

The biggest names in tech all appear to be making a break for AI dominance at the moment. Apple isn’t about to fall behind, either — the company is reportedly holding an employee-only AI summit at the Steve Jobs Theater next week.