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Alibaba Group Holding has been utilising self-developed large language models (LLM) to help Chinese enterprises improve efficiency via its workplace collaboration app DingTalk, as the e-commerce giant pushes ahead with its investment into this hot artificial intelligence (AI) space.
The DingTalk app enables enterprise customers to use Tongyi Qianwen, the ChatGPT-like service launched in April by Alibaba Cloud, said Ye Jun, president of DingTalk, at the annual digital economy conference hosted on Tuesday by Luohan Academy, the open-research platform initiated by Alibaba in 2018.
In a keynote speech given by Ye in Alibaba's home city of Hangzhou, Ye presented a user case of how DingTalk has used generative AI tools to help Belle International, a women's shoe retailer in China, to increase work efficiency in many areas. He said the AI had improved information acquisition, content creation, as well as customer services.
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In a live demonstration the generative AI tool was asked how to promote a new product, and it was instructed to give various responses including mind maps, proposal outlines, as well as images. The app was also able to field customer service questions, using the company's internal database.
Founded in Hangzhou in 2018, Luohan Academy is an open research institute initiated by Alibaba. It has gathered social scientists, including seven Nobel Prize laureates in economics, to research critical issues where digital technology impacts society.
"Five years ago, people's impression of AI was that it could be used for facial recognition, but now with the emergence of ChatGPT and other intelligent capabilities, I believe there is a new beginning," said Ye.
He added that all products within DingTalk will be "re-made with AI" in the future, and that AI will underpin research and development.
LLMs drive AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT from Microsoft-backed OpenAI. LLMs allow the chatbots to answer sophisticated queries with humanlike responses, and generate writing, code, and other content.
Ye's statement came a few weeks after Alibaba said it had integrated its LLMs into Tingwu, its voice recording and transcribing tool that was launched in October 2021, with wider roll-out plans including DingTalk integration.
Alibaba's cloud unit in April unveiled its own alternative to ChatGPT - Tongyi Qianwen - which is based on DAMO Academy's LLMs, marking an early foray into the ChatGPT space, along with search engine giant Baidu, which launched Ernie Bot in March.