Alibaba has opened its AI foundation model Tongyi Qianwen to the public,Privacy policy the company’s cloud division announced in a WeChat post on Wednesday. This move signifies that Chinese authorities have granted Alibaba approval to fully open its AI platform, following a path similar to Baidu and SenseTime in recent weeks. The cloud unit stated that it has established partnerships with Alibaba-owned Taobao, DingTalk, smartphone maker Oppo, and Zhejiang University. These partnerships aim to facilitate the training and development of their own models or applications based on Tongyi Qianwen. E-commerce platform Taobao is currently testing an ask-and-answer feature powered by Alibaba’s model, which can provide “more precise recommendations” to users, enhancing the online shopping experience. This tool is scheduled to be made publicly available ahead of Singles Day, China’s largest online shopping festival. [Alibaba Cloud, in Chinese]
