Chinese generative AI developers rush to upgrade chatbots to handle super-long texts

Chinese generative AI developers rush to upgrade chatbots to handle super-long texts is profiled by BTW Media because published evidence links it to internet infrastructure, governance, operational dependencies, or market visibility.

• The move follows Google, which recently unveiled the latest version of its Gemini LLM that can handle up to 1 million tokens, or roughly 700,000 English words.
• Last week, generative AI start-up Moonshot AI announced a major update of its Kimi chatbot that can handle up to 2 million Chinese characters in a single prompt.

China’s biggest generative artificial intelligence (AI) developers, including Baidu and Alibaba Group Holding, have rushed to upgrade their chatbots so they can handle super-long texts of up to 10 million Chinese characters.

Google Gemini

The move follows Google, which in February unveiled the latest version of its Gemini large language model (LLM) that achieves a long “context window”, the maximum amount of text an LLM can consider when generating a response, of up to 1 million tokens, or roughly 700,000 English words.

Also read: Apple in talks to let Google’s Gemini power iPhone AI features

Also read: Chinese AI chatbot Kimi handles 2 million characters, up from 200k

Chinese generative AI 

Unlike Google, which only made the update available to “a limited group of developers and enterprise customers” as it is “computationally intensive”, according to its blog, Baidu will in April launch a new version of its Ernie Bot that can process up to 5 million Chinese characters for free, according to a report by Chinese media Chinastarmarket on Friday.

Similarly, Alibaba said last week that its “Tongyi Qianwen” chatbot would be free to all users. The chatbot can now process text with about 10 million Chinese characters.

Also last week, Alibaba-backed generative AI startup Moonshot AI announced a major update to its chatbot Kimi, which can now process up to 2 million Chinese characters in a single prompt. The new feature is currently in beta testing and is limited to invited users before a wider roll-out.

The rush to expand context windows reflects how Chinese AI giants are eager to catch up with Western tech leaders.

Baidu and Alibaba were among the first Chinese companies to launch their own chatbots, four and five months after the launch of ChatGPT, respectively.