China’s Tencent Joins Competitive Chatbot Market With New 'Yuanbao' AI Assistant

By Trisha Andrada

May 31, 2024 03:54 AM EDT

China's Tencent, a market leader in video games and social media, is trying to catch up to other firms in the chatbot race by releasing its own artificial intelligence (AI) app, Yuanbao, on Thursday, May 30.

Tencent Launches Yuanbao AI Chatbot

Similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Baidu's Ernie Bot, among others, Yuanbao can analyze and summarize documents, provide questions and responses, and create texts and graphics.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the AI assistant developed by Tencent is based on Hunyuan, the company's proprietary large language model (LLM) that powers ChatGPT and other generative AI offerings. One kind of AI tool is the LLM, a deep-learning algorithm that can be taught from massive amounts of raw data found online.

The fact that Tencent's WeChat, which houses a massive ecosystem of content, can access Yuanbao's search results is one quality it touts. Using the new app's Official Accounts publishing platform, content providers may share articles and information. However, search engines such as Baidu or Google cannot access this material.

Although the launch of Tencent's Yuanbao app is a bit late, it is in line with the company's strategy. Founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng previously hinted that the business would take its time to create generative AI solutions, SCMP reported.

Comparing Yuanbao to Other Chinese AI Chatbot Competitors

Given the stringent restrictions in China, local AI chatbots avoid or follow official lines when answering sensitive political queries.

According to SCMP's testing, Yuanbao answered democratic questions on the mainland and Taiwan with textbook replies, similar to results from Baidu's Ernie Bot and Moonshot AI's Kimi.

To summarize Chinese President Xi Jinping's book The Governance of China, Yuanbao wrote a 1,000-word essay containing numerous main topics. Meanwhile, other chatbots proved less willing to answer inquiries about political figures.

Kimi processed similar articles for a moment before suggesting to change the topic. After briefly introducing the book, Ernie Bot closed the input box so the user could start a fresh chat.