Ant Group receives Chinese government nod to roll out AI services

Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, has received approval from the Chinese government to roll out products powered by major language model Bailing to the public.

Bailing will be applied to Ant’s various services and innovation assistance, Xu Peng, vice president of Ant Group, said in a statement on Monday. Chinese tech companies from Alibaba to Tencent Holdings and Baidu have joined startups Baichuan and Zhipu to release ChatGPT-like products, joining a global race to capitalize on the potential of generative AI. Ant, the owner of Alipay, can leverage the popularity of the mobile payment service to gain more data and insight into user habits.

The government’s approval is in line with Alibaba’s efforts. On Monday, the company’s trading arm also released a suite of tools, including chatbots for small businesses trying to expand abroad.

Last week, Alibaba Cloud – which now houses half of China’s generative AI companies and serves about 80 percent of China’s tech companies – released Tongyi Qianwen 2.0. It also introduced several industry-focused models at the company’s annual technology conference in Hangzhou. In September, Ant unveiled two applications powered by its financial big language model.