Ant receives Chinese government nod to roll out AI services

Ant Group Co, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, has received approval from the Chinese government to launch products powered by its large language model Bailing to the public.

In a statement on Monday, Xu Peng, Vice President of Ant Group, announced that Bailing will be incorporated into Ant’s various services, contributing to innovation within the company.

This move by Ant Group follows the footsteps of other Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent Holdings, and Baidu, who have partnered with startups Baichuan and Zhipu to release products similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This trend shows an increasing global race to capitalize on the potential of generative AI, which allows machines to generate free text that is coherent and contextually relevant.

Ant Group, the parent company of Alipay, China’s leading mobile payment service, is in a favorable position to leverage the popularity of its payment service to gain more data and insight into user habits.

AI is a key focus for Alibaba, as it undergoes a six-way spinoff. The company has defined AI as one of its two core strategies.

Alibaba’s efforts to advance in the AI field align with the Chinese government’s approval of Ant Group’s Bailing. Additionally, Alibaba’s commerce unit has recently launched a suite of tools, including chatbots, to assist small businesses expanding overseas.

Last week, Alibaba Cloud, which hosts half of China’s generative AI firms and serves about 80% of the country’s technology companies, introduced Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, an upgraded version of its natural language processing platform. The cloud computing company also debuted several sector-focused models at its annual tech conference in Hangzhou.

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In September, Ant Group unveiled two applications powered by its financial large language model. Zhixiaobao provides customer service by answering questions, while Zhixiaozhu serves as an assistant for financial professionals.

The integration of Bailing into Ant Group’s services is expected to revolutionize the user experience and enhance the company’s ability to provide personalized and efficient services to its customers.