Ant Receives Chinese Government Nod to Roll Out AI Services

Ant Group Co., the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., received approval from the Chinese government to roll out products powered by its large language model Bailing to the public. Bailing will be applied to Ant's various services and help with innovation, Xu Peng, vice president of Ant Group said in a statement on Monday. Chinese tech firms from Alibaba to Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. have joined startups Baichuan and Zhipu to release ChatGPT-like products, joining a global race to capitalize on the potential of generative AI. Ant, the owner of Alipay, can leverage the popularity of the mobile payment service to gain more data and insight on user habits. Hangzhou-based Alibaba has defined AI as one of its two core strategies as it goes through a six-way spinoff.