Tencent launches into the GenAI with a model for the pros

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 linguistic 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 presents Hunyuan as a platform for various industries, including finance, e-commerce, transport and gaming.

100 billion parameters and more than two trillion tokens in pre-training data

The AI model currently has more than 100 billion parameters and more than two trillion tokens in the pre-training data.

Tencent said it has integrated Hunyuan with 50 of its own products, covering its fintech, advertising, gaming, office productivity and research applications.

Tencent Meeting, for example, now offers an AI assistant capable of performing common tasks, such as creating a meeting report, thanks to 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

“By launching Hunyuan and making it available to companies, Tencent opted for an approach that reconciles the performance of AI-powered chatbots aimed at consumers, with the pragmatic need of companies to increase operational efficiency, 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 who are energizing the Chinese generative AI market, which now includes Baidu, JD.com and Alibaba Cloud.

ChatRhino from JD.com it also boasts a base of 100 billion parameters, compared to 10 billion parameters for its previous model, Vega, at the beginning of last year. According to JD.com , Vega is ahead of the models of Microsoft and Facebook.

Provisional regulations in China on AI

The Tongyi Qianwen model from Alibaba Cloud is available for Chinese customers for beta testing as well as for developers via an API. The Chinese cloud provider has also launched a partnership program in the hope of stimulating the development of AI applications for vertical sectors, including finance and petrochemicals.

The acceleration of AI development comes against the backdrop of interim regulations in China, which were put in place to ensure healthy development of the technology and preserve national security, the Chinese government said.

Source: “ZDNet.com “