Tencent, the Chinese tech giant, is introducing its business-oriented AI model, "Hunyuan," at their annual summit on Thursday. Dowson Tong, CEO of Tencent's cloud and smart industries group, recently spoke with CNBC's Emily Tan in an exclusive interview prior to the occasion. Furthermore, Tencent is unveiling an AI chatbot tomorrow, as revealed in an online post.
Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, will be introducing its AI model named "Hunyuan" for business purposes at a summit taking place on Thursday, as reported by Dowson Tong - CEO of the cloud and smart industries group at Tencent - in an exclusive interview with CNBC prior to the event. This announcement follows Baidu's revelation of various AI-based applications on Tuesday in light of favourable regulations. Tencent has mentioned that it has been internally trialling Hunyuan's AI model for fintech and advertising. Additionally, the influential gaming and social media company mentioned in an online post that it would be launching an AI chatbot at the summit. Tong revealed to CNBC that Tencent is blending Hunyuan's capabilities with its own products such as WeChat (the messaging and payments app) and Tencent Meeting (the video conference platform).
Over the last few weeks, Chinese companies such as Baidu have been granted approval to launch AI-powered chatbots to the general public. These bots, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, are designed for conversations with humans that sound natural, but mainly in Chinese. Some bots, like Baidu's Ernie, will also use plugins to turn text into images and videos. However, ChatGPT is not available in China due to the newer regulations on generative AI that were set in place on August 15th. When discussing the regulations, Tong has remarked that due to the novelty of this technology, it remains unclear what the eventual impact will be on society.
He argued that it's wise to implement precautionary measures which would guarantee that the technology or services being presented are of sufficient quality to avoid the spreading of incorrect details. Chinese officials mentioned that the "temporary" rules which were established last month would not apply to firms developing AI innovation that is not open to the public. This is more lenient than the blueprints that were published back in April which claimed that forthcoming regulations would apply even during the researching stage.
Beijing has been more open to generative AI than some feared, but Chinese firms are being hindered by US restrictions on getting hold of powerful semiconductors. GPUs, being the latest and greatest of these chips, provide companies with the capability to teach AI models. When asked about US limitations, Tong informed CNBC: "This issue is really slowing down our development."
He reported that the need for computing power in China is greater than what is currently available, leading companies to concentrate on individual use cases and create more suitable models. He further noted that he expects an increase in GPU compute capacity in the coming months which should expedite technological development.
Tencent is one amongst many firms in China - from startups to smartphone maker Huawei - that have declared AI products in 2019. August saw Alibaba make known its own AI model to third-party developers.Tong from Tencent remarked that AI necessitates industry-specific preparation for the technology to yield results. He listed the business uses in areas such as tourism, finance, public services and customer service.Tong stated, "We have faith in that various customers could benefit more by making use of open-source models and utilising their own enterprise data to train for their own models to suit their specific needs in their industrial use cases." Along with that, he added that such particular use can also help with data security.
Comments