Tencent releases AI mannequin Hunyuan for companies amid China competitors

Chinese language tech large Tencent is launching its synthetic intelligence mannequin “Hunyuan” for enterprise use at an annual summit on Thursday, Dowson Tong, CEO of the cloud and sensible industries group at Tencent, informed CNBC in an unique interview forward of the occasion.

The information comes days after Baidu revealed a slew of AI-powered purposes on Tuesday within the wake of extra supportive regulation.

Tencent has mentioned it was internally testing its Hunyuan AI mannequin on promoting and fintech. The gaming and social media large can be set to launch an AI chatbot on Thursday, the corporate mentioned in a web-based submit.

Tencent is integrating Hunyuan’s capabilities with its present merchandise for video conferencing and social media, Tong informed CNBC.

The corporate operates WeChat, a broadly used messaging and funds app in China, and video convention platform Tencent Assembly.

Baidu and several other different Chinese language firms obtained the inexperienced gentle in the previous few weeks to launch AI-powered chatbots to the general public.

Much like ChatGPT, the bots purport to answer queries in a human-like, conversational trend — however primarily in Chinese language. Some, similar to Baidu’s Ernie bot, additionally convert textual content to pictures and video, with the assistance of plugins.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is not formally out there in China. The chatbot releases comply with new Chinese language regulation on generative AI that took impact Aug. 15.

When requested concerning the guidelines, Tong identified that such synthetic intelligence is so new that nobody is aware of what influence it should have on society.

“It is prudent to place in some guardrails in place,” he mentioned. That can assist be sure that the know-how or the providers being provided are of excessive sufficient high quality so they do not create and distribute false info, he mentioned.

Chinese language authorities mentioned the “interim” guidelines that took impact final month wouldn’t apply to firms growing the AI tech so long as the product was not out there to the mass public.

That is extra relaxed than a draft launched in April that mentioned forthcoming guidelines would apply even on the analysis stage.

Whereas Beijing has proven it’s extra supportive of generative AI than initially feared, Chinese language firms additionally face U.S. restrictions on acquiring superior semiconductors. Essentially the most innovative variations of the high-tech chips, often known as graphics processing items (GPUs), permit firms to coach AI fashions.

“The constraint that we’re going through will hinder the progress, the velocity of improvement,” Tong informed CNBC in response to a query about U.S. restrictions.

He famous demand for computing energy total far exceeds provide in China. To mitigate the scarcity, he mentioned firms are “specializing in particular use circumstances, constructing fashions of the suitable measurement.”

“And we hope that the availability of the GPU compute shall be bigger within the coming months, and subsequently the event of those applied sciences can get sooner.”

Tencent is only one of many firms in China — starting from startups to telephone maker Huawei — which have rushed to announce AI merchandise this 12 months. In August, Alibaba introduced it was opening its personal AI mannequin to third-party builders.

Synthetic intelligence requires industry-specific coaching for the know-how to generate worth, Tencent’s Tong mentioned. He listed enterprise use circumstances in tourism, finance, public providers and customer support.

“We consider many alternative clients, in reality, would profit extra by leveraging open-source fashions and use their very own enterprise information to coach for their very own fashions to fulfill the very particular wants of their industrial use circumstances,” he mentioned.

That designated use may assist with information safety, he mentioned.