Tencent using Hunyuan AI model in 180 services amid competition with local rivals Baidu and Alibaba

The tech giant announced that it has seen improvements in products such as Tencent Docs and WeChat search after integrating its generative AI model
The company is part of a global race to put AI in as many products as possible, as Microsoft and Google have made similar strides in recent months

Artificial intelligence

Ben Jiangin Beijing

Published: 7:30pm, 27 Oct 2023

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Chinese social networking and video gaming giant Tencent Holdings has baked its ChatGPT-like generative artificial intelligence (AI) model into scores of products and services as competition in the red-hot sector continues apace in the world’s second largest economy.

The Shenzhen-based firm’s Hunyuan large language model (LLM), the technology that underpins OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar products, is now integrated into more than 180 services, it announced in a post published to the official Hunyuan account on Tencent’s WeChat.

The sprawling Chinese tech giant said it has seen improvements in many of its services that include the conferencing app Tencent Meeting and web-based word processor Tencent Docs, along with its online advertising business and WeChat search.

iFlytek says its LLM outperforms ChatGPT model in Chinese

Clients from a variety of fields – including retail, education, finance, medicine, and media – are already leveraging the Hunyuan model, according to the company. Engineers at the company have been using Hunyuan, trained with 32 major programming languages and a plethora of technical books and blogs, to assist with day-to-day coding and debugging, according to the company.

Tencent’s move to make its AI omnipresent across all of its product offerings reflects a trend that has already taken hold among domestic rivals and foreign tech giants. Baidu has made its Ernie Bot central to its cloud computing ambitions. Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, integrated its Tongyi Qianwen model into products including e-commerce platform Taobao and the Slack-like app DingTalk.

Microsoft, a backer and user of OpenAI’s models, and Google have been integrating AI into many of their own products such as search and office suites. Microsoft has been especially active in promoting its AI services to companies in Asia.

Measuring AI progress against the capabilities of ChatGPT has become routine with new model upgrades from Chinese companies. Tencent said the latest version of Hunyuan surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 in Chinese-language capabilities.

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How does China’s AI stack up against ChatGPT?

Baidu said in June that Ernie Bot surpassed ChatGPT 3.5 in comprehensive tests, while outperforming the more advanced ChatGPT 4 in several Chinese-language capabilities.

Chinese AI firm iFlyTek, known for its audio recognition, said this week that its Spark 3.0 LLM outperformed ChatGPT in several capabilities.

Big Tech firms are betting big on AI being a future revenue driver. Tencent unveiled an enterprise Hunyuan-based service last month. The model will be available for local enterprises to build and test apps while using the company’s cloud computing services, Tencent vice-president Jiang Jie previously said.

Tencent appears more cautious in making Hunyuan available to the public for private use. Hunyuan Assistant remains unavailable for public use despite the Hunyuan bot being included on a list of government-approved chatbots in late August.

Generative AI products are monitored closely in China because their unpredictability can sometimes result in responses considered politically sensitive.

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