February 9, 2023: On Wednesday, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba said it is using a part of ChatGPT, joining the bumpy tech firms to bounce on board the chatbot hype.

A firm’s spokesperson stated that it is working on a ChatGPT-style technology, which is currently being tested internally.

Alibaba shares increased by 3% in pre-market trade in the U.S.

The move comes as tech firms look to increase the excitement generated nearly ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot made by OpenAI. Users can ask ChatGPT questions on various topics, write essays and even generate code.

ChatGPT falls into generative AI, an artificial intelligence option that can be used to create text. It is powered by a significant language model that uses large swathes of data to get its ChatGPT rival.

ChatGPT has sparked an AI arms race among the world’s most prominent tech players. Microsoft invested in OpenAI and announced an AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser this week, which will be underpinned by ChatGPT technology.

This week, Google announced its artificial intelligence chatbot technology, Bard, as part of a “code red” plan to answer the challenge posed by ChatGPT.

Chinese search giant Baidu stated that this week it is testing its chatbot called “Ernie bot” in English or “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese. The announcement sent shares zooming, highlighting investor excitement over the technology.

Alibaba, one of China’s most significant cloud computing players and the place’s significant e-commerce company, hinted that its chatbot could be integrated into its products.

“As a technology leader, we keep investing in turning cutting-edge new things into value-added applications for our customers and their end-users through cloud services,” an Alibaba spokesperson told CNBC.

On Wednesday, NetEase, one of China’s significant gaming firms, said that its education subsidiary Youdao works on generative AI. A familiar person said that the firm is looking at using sign language models in a few of its education productions.