Alibaba Cloud, a cloud computing company and a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, unveiled the latest version of its Large Language Model (LLM), Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, at the annual Apsara Conference.

Alibaba Cloud’s annual technology conference also introduced new industry-specific artificial intelligence (AI) models, aimed at helping businesses unlock the transformative potential of generative AI across various sectors.

“Large language models hold immense potential to revolutionize industries,” said Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud. “We are committed to using cutting-edge technologies, including generative AI, to help our customers capture the growth momentum forward.”

Alibaba Cloud unveils new language AI model
Alibaba Cloud to open source large language models

Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, a generic LLM with several hundred billion parameters, represents a substantial upgrade from its predecessor launched in April. According to Alibaba Cloud, the model successfully outperforms some leading LLMs in benchmarks across domains, including language understanding, arithmetic problem-solving, and question-answering. 

Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 is designed with expanded model size and an improved alignment technique, equipping it with capabilities in understanding complex instructions, copywriting, reasoning, memorization, and prevention of hallucinations. The model is now accessible to the public through its website and mobile applications, and available for developers through APIs.

Industry-specific models

Customer support, legal counseling, healthcare, finance, documentation management, audio and video management, code development, and character creation industries now have AI models developed specifically for their requirements.

“We aim to be the most open cloud in the era of AI,” said Joe Tsai, chair of Alibaba Group. “We hope that through this cloud, it will become easier and affordable for everyone to develop and use AI, so we can help, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to turn AI into huge productivity,” 

In response to the growing demand for powerful infrastructure supporting generative AI development, Alibaba Cloud also unveiled an AI model training platform and a series of cloud products. These resources are designed to enable customers, partners, developers, startups, and the wider community to fully harness the potential of generative AI.

GenAI Service Platform

To cater to the increasing demand for generative AI, Alibaba Cloud introduced the GenAI Service Platform, an all-in-one AI model-building platform aimed at streamlining the model development and application-building process. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools for data management, model deployment and evaluation, and rapid engineering, making it easier for enterprises in all sectors to develop their enterprise-specific AI models.