Jack Ma's Ant Group Explores ChatGPT-Style Services. Challenges Baidu with Investment in AI

Alibaba Group Holding Limited's BABA fintech affiliate Ant Group Co is developing large-language model technology to power ChatGPT-style services.

The Jack Ma-backed affiliate's "Zhen Yi" project involves a dedicated unit and will deploy in-house research, Bloomberg reports.

Ant invested nearly 20.5 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in R&D in 2023, doubling the company's annual spending on such efforts versus 2019.

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It is bolstering tech for distributed databases, computer infrastructure, blockchain, privacy computing, and network security. 

Ant's move marks its attempts to compete with Alibaba, Baidu Inc BIDU, and SenseTime Group Inc SNTMF. The efforts mirror  Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google and Microsoft Corp's MSFT exploration of generative AI capable of creating original content from poetry to art just with simple user prompts.

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.69% at $87.32 premarket on the last check Wednesday.