Chinese e-commerce and technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. today announced that it’s opening its Tongyi Qianwen artificial intelligence large language model to the public, making it accessible for developers and enterprise companies to adopt.

Tongyi Qianwen was initially unveiled in April as a product of Alibaba DAMO Academy, which developed it as a large language model technology similar to that of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. The LLM possess both English and Chinese language capabilities and was initially planned for deployment across Alibaba’s various businesses to improve user experience.

Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Division, the business segment responsible for AI development, announced on the company’s WeChat account that organizations including OPPO, Taobao and Zhejiang University had come to an agreement to train their own models or build AI applications based on Tongyi Qianwen. The company also said that it would soon be releasing an open-source version of the AI model to further its adoption by businesses and innovation by the community.

Earlier this week, newly appointed Alibaba Group Chief Executive Eddie Wu outlined a new AI strategy for the company in an internal letter viewed by Reuters. He said AI would become a central theme for the company’s future.

“Over the next decade, the most significant change agent will be the disruptions bought about by AI across all sectors,” Wu said in the letter. “If we don’t keep up with the changes of the AI era, we will be displaced.”

The model is being deployed heavily across Alibaba’s ecosystem to enhance user experience, enterprise communication, voice assistance, search, navigation and assistance. The model is first coming to DingTalk, Alibaba’s digital collaboration workplace and app development system, and Tmall Genie, a provider of internet of things-enabled smart home appliances.

This news comes at a time that other Chinese companies have been developing their own AI models to compete in the marketplace. Chinese search giant Baidu deployed an AI-based generative AI model named Ernie, that the company says can surpass OpenAI’s GPT-4 in many metrics for the Chinese language.

SenseTime, an AI startup based in Hong Kong, also announced the launch of its SenseChat AI platform in August. JD.com, China’s largest online retailer, also revealed plans in February to introduce its own AI chatbot, described as an “industrial version” of ChatGPT called ChatJD.

Although the Chinese government supports the development and use of AI and large language models, it has recently implemented new regulations that will ensure that it is not misused for activities that may be illegal or influence national politics. China became one of the first countries to legislate AI regulations when it published rules on generative AI, which went into effect Aug. 15.

Image: Alibaba