Ant Group gets green light from Beijing to release new AI products, built on its own large language model, to the public

The Chinese fintech giant said it will roll out multiple AI products, built on its foundational Bailing large language model, for public use
Bailing will also be used across Ant’s various operations, which is expected to help the firm develop more innovative AI products

Ant Group

Ben Jiangin Beijing

Published: 9:00pm, 6 Nov 2023

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Ant Group has won Beijing’s approval to release to the public products built on its own large language model (LLM) – the technology used to train chatbots like ChatGPT – as the Chinese financial technology giant uses generative artificial intelligence to broaden its presence in the financial services industry.

Hangzhou-based Ant, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, said it will roll out multiple products built on its foundational Bailing LLM for public use, according to a company statement on Monday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Bailing will also be used across Ant’s various operations, which is expected to help the firm develop more innovative products, according to Ant vice-president Xu Peng, who is in charge of Bailing.

“Ant’s LLM … aims to create value in the industry,” Xu said. He said the company expects to release more AI applications to the public based on its development of innovative products across vertical industries. No release dates were provided.

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LLMs are deep-learning algorithms that can recognise, summarise, translate, predict and generate content using very large data sets.

Ant’s foray into the LLM arena underscores the increased competition among China’s Big Tech companies to help the country close the gap with the West in developing innovative ChatGPT-like services, as the government sets out to implement a national standard for LLMs in line with efforts to regulate AI.

Baidu, Huawei Technologies, Tencent Holdings and Alibaba have earlier released their respective LLMs for adoption in various industries, despite the heavy costs incurred from building massive computing infrastructure needed to train and develop new AI applications.

In early September, Ant unveiled a finance-specific LLM called AntfinGLM powered by Bailing at the “Inclusion Conference on the Bund” conference. That was used to upgrade Zhixiaobao, the firm’s consumer-facing “intelligent financial assistant” for wealth management and insurance.

Chinese fintech giant Ant Group launches own AI large language model

Ant also introduced Zhixiaozhu at the same conference. This AntfinGLM-based application can assist finance practitioners in areas including investment research, insurance and marketing.

The upgraded Zhixiaobao and Zhixiaozhu will be available to users when they receive regulatory approval, Ant executives said at the time.

Ant chairman and chief executive Eric Jing Xiandong said at the Shanghai conference that the rise of LLMs will “reshape many commercial activities”.

Alibaba’s cloud unit unveils new industry-specific tools built on its AI model

News of the Chinese government’s go-ahead for Ant to release its AI products to the public comes days after Alibaba’s digital technology unit launched a suite of industry-specific AI tools, built on the Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 LLM.

At least 10 industry-specific AI tools were introduced by Alibaba Cloud at its annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province. The three-day event concluded on November 2.

Chinese internet search giant Baidu’s fintech arm, Du Xiaoman, in May launched fintech-oriented LLM Xuanyuan, which was trained extensively with finance industry data including investment research notes, credit score reports and financial news.

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