Alibaba says it is working on a rival to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot that has caused excitement around the world. Alibaba says its own products are undergoing internal testing.
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The Chinese e-commerce giant Ali Baba told CNBC Wednesday that they are working on a competitor to ChatGPT, joining a flurry of tech companies to jump on the chatbot hype board.
A company spokesperson said that the company is working on ChatGPT-style technology and that it is currently being tested internally within the company.
Alibaba shares jumped 3% in pre-market trading in the US
The move comes as tech companies globally are embracing the excitement created by ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot created by OpenAI. Users can ask ChatGPT questions on various topics, write essays and even create code.
ChatGPT falls under the category of generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that can be used to create text or images.
Alibaba says it has been working on generative AI since 2017. The company did not give a timeline for when it might start competing with ChatGPT.
ChatGPT has sparked an AI arms race among the world’s biggest tech players. Microsoft is investing in OpenAI and this week announced its AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, which will be powered by ChatGPT technology.
This week too, Google announced an artificial intelligence chatbot technology called Bard, as part of its “code red” plan to respond to the challenges posed by ChatGPT.
The Chinese search giant Baidu said this week to try his own chatbot called “Ernie bot” in English or “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese. The announcement sent the stock skyrocketing, highlighting investor excitement about the technology.
Alibaba, one of China’s biggest cloud computing players and the country’s largest e-commerce company, says its own chatbots can be integrated into its products.
“As a technology leader, we will continue to invest in turning cutting-edge innovations into value-added applications for our customers and end-users through cloud services,” an Alibaba spokesperson told CNBC.