Alibaba May Launch AI Chatbot April 11

Alibaba may formally launch an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Tuesday (April 11).

The tech giant is holding an Alibaba Cloud Summit event on that day and may take the opportunity to unveil the latest results of its deepening involvement in the AI chatbot arena, Reuters reported Friday (April 7).

Alibaba has been inviting other businesses to test its chatbot as it aims to capitalize on the attention brought to the sector by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to the report.

The company’s chatbot is reportedly designed for business users and is now set to undergo more trials as Alibaba opens up registration for other businesses to test it.

This report comes in the wake of months of news and speculation since ChatGPT became a sensation in the broader public.

For example, Google Health announced in March that the progress it is making in the digital transformation of healthcare includes the use of large language models (LLM) to automate diagnostics.

In clinical settings, there is potential for AI to help treat more patients with greater accuracy, as Google Health reported that its Med-PaLM 2 has consistently scored 85% on medical exam questions — a result that was 18% better than a previous iteration of the AI model.

In January, it was reported that Microsoft is investing $10 billion over 10 years in OpenAI, expanding on a relationship between the two firms that dates back to 2019.

Microsoft’s CEO said during an earnings call at the time that “the way for our investors to see this is we fundamentally believe that the next big platform wave  … is going to be AI.”

The report about Alibaba comes about two weeks after the firm said it was undergoing the biggest revamp in its nearly 25-year history, splitting into six pieces with plans to take these new businesses public.

“The original intention and fundamental purpose of this reform is to make our organization more agile, shorten decision making links and respond faster,” Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said at the time.

That report came as the Chinese government steps back from a broad regulatory crackdown.