(Yicai Global) April 11 -- Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing arm will integrate its new large language model application into all the Chinese e-commerce titan’s applications and is allowing corporate users access to the model, the company chairman said today.

Tongyi Qianwen will accessible to businesses and they will be able to finetune it to their own needs so that together they can advance AI’s development, Daniel Zhang, who is also chief executive officer at Hangzhou-based Alibaba, said at the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit.

Alibaba Cloud will also make its full-stack AI infrastructure, that it has developed over 10 years starting from the Aspara operating system to chips to smart computers, accessible to companies, he added.

"All firms are at the same starting line in the smart era," Zhang said. "All industries, software and services deserve a 'reboot' based on new types of AI. This will not only change the customer experience but also alter our work and life patterns."

The emergence of AI large language models is an epoch-making milestone, and humans are entering a brand-new era of intelligentization, Zhang said. Just like steam engines brought about the industrial revolution, large language models will be broadly applied in all sectors, significantly enhancing productivity and profoundly changing our lifestyles.

The development of a large language model containing over 1 trillion specifications does not just involve algorithms but also requires support from ultra-sized AI infrastructure as it is a complex engineering project that requires huge computing power, networks, big data and machine learning.

Chinese tech firms have been racing to enter the AI-generated content sector ever since US AI firm OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT went viral earlier this year. Search engine titan Baidu launched its Ernie Bot on March 16. Tencent Holdings’ Senior Vice President Dowson Tong said on March 30 that the internet behemoth is developing a chatbot, and e-retailer JD.com has also said it will launch 'ChatJD' later this year.

Editor: Kim Taylor