Alibaba Cloud is looking for partners to help it build custom artificial intelligence (AI) generative models for businesses in various verticals, including finance and petrochemicals.
The Chinese cloud service provider has launched a partnership program that it hopes will accelerate the development of such applications, powered by its great language model, Tongyi Qianwen. Launched earlier this month, the generative AI model is expected to be integrated into all of Alibaba’s business applications, including e-commerce, search, navigation, entertainment, business communication and intelligent voice assistance. .
With the Tongyi Qianwen Partner Program, Alibaba aims to facilitate the creation of great language models suitable for different business sectors.
Delivering “more tangible value” with AI models
The first industrial models of the partnership program will encompass sectors such as transport, hospitality, finance and telecommunications. The first seven partners signed up for the program include petrochemical company Kunlun Digital Technology, transportation company China Transinfo Technology and power company LongShine Technology.
As part of this initiative, Alibaba Cloud offers its partners technical support, cloud computing, as well as AI and machine learning tools. These partners can adapt and retrain the vendor’s broad-language AI model with their proprietary technology and industry expertise, in a “secure and designated” cloud environment, Alibaba said.
The jointly developed models will then be made available on websites and through APIs for enterprise customers and developers, who can use AI frameworks to create applications, such as buying guides and domain-specific virtual assistants.
The program will allow Alibaba to deliver “more tangible value” to enterprise customers with AI models that meet the specific needs of their industry, said Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, who also leads the “cloud” activity.
AliOS, Alibaba’s car OS
The Chinese supplier is currently integrating Tongyi Qianwen with its car operating system, AliOS, for internal testing, and IM Motors is expected to be the first automotive brand to implement the AI model. Manufacturer of electric vehicles, IM Motors is a joint venture backed by Alibaba and SAIC Motor.
Alibaba said it has received more than 200,000 beta test requests for Tongyi Qianwen since its April 11 launch. These requests came from companies in different verticals, including transportation, fashion, and fintech.
Tongyi Qianwen already performs more than 10 roles on DingTalk, Alibaba’s online collaborative work platform, where her chatbot can create to-do lists, generate conversation summaries and draft marketing messages. According to Alibaba, the chatbot will continue to learn as users pass data to it.
Tongyi Qianwen has Chinese and English language skills.
Significant drop in cloud computing prices
The partner program was launched at Alibaba Cloud’s annual Partner Summit in Nanjing this week, where the provider also unveiled price cuts for its key products and services. Ranging from 15% to 50%, the price adjustments are the largest price reduction to date; however, only customers in China will benefit from these discounts.
The move is part of Alibaba’s efforts to expand its footprint in the domestic public cloud market.
Source: “ZDNet.com”