Wuzhen Summit sees Alibaba and Baidu show off latest AI products as Chinese rivals play catch-up to OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo

Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s launch of its latest artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) GPT-4 Turbo at the start-up’s first developer event earlier this week is expected to widen the gap with Chinese rivals, according to industry insiders and analysts.

The upgrades to GPT-4 Turbo, the underlying technology for OpenAI’s popular conversational bot ChatGPT, include a larger memory to remember up to 300 pages of text in a single prompt, cheaper pricing for developers, and a knowledge cut-off date up to April 2023, said chief executive Sam Altman.

GPT-4 Turbo is expected to kick-off another flurry of activity as Chinese competitors, such as Baidu and Alibaba Group Holding, race to catch up, according to Xu Liang, a Hangzhou-based entrepreneur in the AI sector.

“Big Tech firms and start-ups will need to invest more to keep pace [with OpenAI’s progress],” Xu said in an interview with the Post on Tuesday. “Otherwise their products – if they fall too far behind [OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo] – will disappoint users.”

Xu said while some companies may sharpen their focus on developing proprietary [foundational] models, others might decide to build industry-specific models with bespoke capabilities for different industries.

Lu Yanxia, research director at IT consultancy International Data Corp, said OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo will “inspire and spur” local Big Tech firms to further invest in areas such as natural language processing, a critical technology that helps AI chatbots understand and process complex human languages.