Tencent releases AI model for businesses as competition in China heats up

cnbc.com:

Chinese tech giant Tencent is launching its artificial intelligence model «Hunyuan» for business use at an annual summit on Thursday, Dowson Tong, CEO of the cloud and smart industries group at Tencent, told CNBC in an exclusive interview ahead of the event.

The news comes days after Baidu revealed a slew of AI-powered applications on Tuesday in the wake of more supportive regulation.

Tencent has said it was internally testing its Hunyuan AI model on advertising and fintech. The gaming and social media giant is also set to release an AI chatbot on Thursday, the company said in an online post.

Tencent is integrating Hunyuan's capabilities with its existing products for video conferencing and social media, Tong told CNBC.

The company operates WeChat, a widely used messaging and payments app in China, and video conference platform Tencent Meeting.

Baidu and several other Chinese companies received the green light in the last few weeks to release AI-powered chatbots to the public.

Similar to ChatGPT, the bots purport to respond to queries in a human-like, conversational fashion — but primarily in Chinese. Some, such as Baidu's Ernie bot, also convert text to images and video, with the help of plugins.

OpenAI's ChatGPT isn't officially available in China. The chatbot releases follow new Chinese regulation on generative AI that took effect Aug. 15.

When asked about the rules, Tong pointed out that such artificial intelligence is so new that no one knows what impact it will have on society.

«It's prudent to put in some guardrails in place,» he said. That will help make sure the technology or the services being offered are of high enough quality so they don't create and distribute false information, he said.

Chinese authorities