JD enters China's AI race

Chinese e-commerce giant JD has unveiled its large language model called ChatRhino, which could be used in a wide range of fields including retail, logistics, finance and health, as the company aims to bolster digital transformation and upgrade various industries by leveraging artificial intelligence technology.

The model will be deployed within JD's core business segments in the second half of this year, the company said. JD will offer ChatRhino to its enterprise clients in the first half of 2024. 

JD has accumulated huge data and knowledge from extensive industrial scenarios, and it will strengthen cooperation with industry partners to promote technological innovation, said Xu Ran, CEO of the company, at 2023 JDDiscovery tech summit held on Thursday in Beijing.

Cao Peng, chair of JD's technology committee and president of JD Cloud, JD's cloud computing arm, said the digital and intelligent supply chain has helped train industry-specific LLMs, while LLMs leverage supply chains to go deep into industries.

LLMs refer to computer algorithms that are trained with huge amounts of data and capable of generating content such as images, text, audio and video. They are the key technology underpinning ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by US-based AI research company OpenAI.

Major Chinese tech heavyweights, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, have unveiled their own LLMs amid a worldwide frenzy surrounding ChatGPT. A slew of startups have scrambled to launch their own LLMs.

As of May, China had developed at least 79 AI large language models, or rivals of ChatGPT, according to a report released by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China.

Xu Ran, CEO of JD delivers, a speech at 2023 JDDiscovery tech summit on Thursday in Beijing. Provided to chinadaily.com.cn