China’s biggest fintech company, Ant Group, has announced it will be launching a finance -based AI large language model (LLM), as the generative AI race continues to heat up in the country.
Ant Group’s new model, the Zhixiaobao 2.0 app, has begun closed testing and is designed to provide customers with financial advice and analysis. It is currently awaiting regulatory approval.
The launch sees the company, which has over 1 billion users worldwide for its Alipay payment app, join other tech giants Tencent and Xiaomi who recently announced their own LLMs.
Tencent Holdings announced on Thursday (7 Sept) that its LLM named “Hunyuan” has debuted for enterprise use.
Baidu, China’s largest search engine, also released an LLM, an AI chatbot named Ernie 3.5, following regulatory approval on 5 September.
Heavy regulation in China requires companies to submit to assessments before receiving clearance to release AI models.
The Cyberspace Administration of China announced temporary regulations in July for generative AI developers.
The regulations require developers to enact measures to improve the transparency of their software development process and refine the accuracy of generated results.
The rules also call for AI developers to respect intellectual property rights and not use their generative AI to create unfair competition in the tech sector.
Baidu CEO, Robin Li, disclosed at an industry event last week that more than 70 LLMs are now available in China.
