Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing services unit has extended support in China for the next-generation large language model (LLM) – the technology used to train chatbots like ChatGPT – that was launched last week by Meta Platforms as a free artificial intelligence (AI) resource for research and commercial use.
Alibaba Cloud, the Chinese e-commerce giant’s digital technology and intelligence backbone, has added Meta’s Llama 2 LLM to ModelScope, its open-source “model-as-a-service” platform that makes available more than 700 AI models – covering various fields from computer vision to natural language processing and audio – to local developers. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The addition of Llama 2 to its ModelScope platform is in line with Alibaba Cloud’s goal to offer LLM start-ups “comprehensive services including model training, inferencing and deployment”, the Hangzhou-based company said on Tuesday in a post published on its official WeChat account. In addition, the firm said it will provide funding and other forms of support to these businesses.
LLMs are deep-learning AI algorithms that can recognise, summarise, translate, predict and generate content using very large data sets.
Alibaba Cloud also said in its post that it has tailored services via ModelScope that would enable Chinese developers that use Llama 2 to design and build their AI applications faster.
The company’s expanded LLM portfolio on ModelScope reflects the Chinese tech industry’s strong interest in closing the gap with the West by building innovative ChatGPT-like services, as the government sets out to implement a national standard for LLMs in line with efforts to regulate AI.
Under a partnership with Microsoft Corp announced on July 18, Facebook parent Meta said the software giant is its “preferred partner for Llama 2”, which is optimised to run locally on Windows and is available on the Azure cloud computing platform. It said Llama 2 is also available through Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other cloud providers.
Cloud computing services from Alibaba, Microsoft, AWS and other providers enable enterprises to buy, sell, lease or distribute a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service over the internet, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are managed inside data centres.
With Llama 2 available free for research and commercial use, Meta provides developers with an alternative to costly LLMs in the market, such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI’s GPT-4 and GPT-3.5.
Still, AI services built on Llama 2 with more than 700 million monthly active users will need to get a licence from Meta.
Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent Holdings and Huawei Technologies earlier this year rolled out their respective LLM applications for wider adoption in various industries in China.
