Tencent is the latest Chinese player to jump on the generative artificial intelligence (AI) bandwagon, offering a model on which local organizations can test and create their own applications.
Called Hunyuan, this large language model (LLM) is accessible via APIs on Tencent’s cloud platform. Chinese companies can tailor the model to their specific needs, using capabilities such as Chinese language processing and advanced logical reasoning, Tencent said.
The AI model also facilitates a series of functions, such as image creation, text recognition and writing. The Chinese cloud service provider touts Hunyuan as a platform for various industries, including finance, e-commerce, transportation and gaming.
100 billion parameters and over two trillion tokens in pre-training data
The AI model currently has over 100 billion parameters and over two trillion tokens in the pre-training data.
Tencent said it has integrated Hunyuan into 50 of its own products, covering its fintech, advertising, gaming, office productivity and search applications.
Tencent Meeting, for example, now offers an AI assistant that can perform common tasks, such as creating a meeting report, using natural language processing and user prompts. Its advertising tools can also be used to create buying guides that sellers can use as marketing assets.
Explosion of the generative AI market in China
“In launching Hunyuan and making it available to businesses, Tencent has opted for an approach that balances the performance of AI-powered, consumer-facing chatbots with the pragmatic need of businesses to increase operational efficiency, to reduce costs, protect privacy and proprietary data,” said Dowson Tong, senior executive vice president of Tencent.
The tech giant is part of a growing list of Chinese players driving China’s generative AI market, which now includes Baidu, JD.com and Alibaba Cloud.
JD.com’s ChatRhino also boasts a base of 100 billion parameters, up from 10 billion parameters for its previous model, Vega, early last year. According to JD.com, Vega is ahead of Microsoft and Facebook models.
Interim regulations in China on AI
Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen model is available to Chinese customers for beta testing as well as to developers via API. The Chinese cloud provider also launched a partner program in hopes of boosting the development of AI applications for verticals including finance and petrochemicals.
The acceleration of AI development comes amid interim regulations in China, which have been put in place to ensure healthy development of the technology and safeguard national security, the Chinese government said.
Source: “ZDNet.com”