China's Big Tech Tencent Holdings has launched Yuanbao, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot App
China's tech giant Tencent Holdings has recently unveiled its latest innovation in the form of Yuanbao, an AI-powered chatbot application. This move by Tencent signifies its entry into the competitive arena of generative AI, directly challenging industry leader OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Tencent's Yuanbao
As reported by Chinese economic media Caixin, Tencent's Yuanbao offers users a wide range of functionalities including AI-powered search, document summarization, content creation, image generation, language learning, and AI avatar creation. The app is powered by Tencent's proprietary large language model (LLM) known as Huyuan, which boasts an impressive 1 trillion parameters. According to Liu Yuhong, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Director of the Huyuan Project, the model has undergone significant enhancements over the past year.
Competition in the Generative AI Space
Chinese tech companies are actively engaging in the development of generative AI technologies, mirroring the efforts of their Silicon Valley counterparts. Players like Baidu, Alibaba Group Holdings, and ByteDance have already introduced services that rival OpenAI's ChatGPT. ByteDance's self-generated AI model, Du Bao, enjoys a user base of over 26 million active users per month, while Baidu's 'Ernie Bot' chatbot amassed 200 million users in the previous month.
Market Growth and Projections
Market research firm IDC forecasts substantial growth in China's investment in the generative AI sector, with an expected annual growth rate of 86.2%, reaching $13 billion by 2027 from $600 million in 2022. This growth trajectory surpasses the global average growth rate of 73.3% during the same period. Analysts predict that the Asia-Pacific region, led by China, will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the generative AI market.
Rising User Adoption
The adoption of generative AI technologies is on the rise in China, evident from the increasing user base of AI-powered applications. Quest Mobile, a mobile data research firm, reports that the number of users of created AI apps in China has surged to 73.8 million as of March, marking an astounding 816.9% year-on-year growth.
