Ant Group, JD.com join Baidu, Alibaba, ByteDance in China’s LLM race amid generative AI frenzy spurred by ChatGPT
- Fintech giant Ant confirms it is working on a large language model project named ‘Zhen Yi’
- E-commerce conglomerate JD.com says it will unveil its LLM during its annual cloud summit on July 13
Financial technology giant Ant Group said it is developing technology related to large language models (LLMs), while e-commerce conglomerate JD.com said it will launch its own model next month, as Chinese Big Tech companies race to stake out market share amid explosive interest around generative artificial intelligence (AI).
An Ant spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that the Hangzhou-based company’s in-house research team is working on an LLM project named “Zhen Yi”, without further elaborating. The news was first reported by Chinese media.
Meanwhile Beijing-based JD announced it will unveil its LLM during its annual cloud summit taking place on July 13. JD vice-president He Xiaodong said in April that the company’s upcoming ChatGPT rival, potentially called “ChatJD”, will focus on business applications, according to local media reports.
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Is China’s technology falling behind in the race for its own ChatGPT?
Ant and JD join a host of Chinese companies that have jumped on the LLM bandwagon after US start-up OpenAI’s ChatGPT set off a global market frenzy around similar technology.
Other firms, such as AI developer SenseTime and voice recognition specialist iFlyTek, have also joined the fray.
