China’s Ant Group unveils finance-specific AI model as race heats up

Ant Group unveiled a finance-specific artificial intelligence (AI) model on Friday and started testing consumer and professional apps for the product, joining a crowded race to deploy AI in heavily regulated China.

The foray by Ant into financial AI is notable as the company founded by billionaire Jack Ma is China’s biggest fintech firm, with more than 1 billion users worldwide for its Alipay payment app.

Ant follows AI announcements by tech giants Tencent and Xiaomi on Thursday and Ant’s affiliate Alibaba in April. By July in China, more than 130 companies had introduced “large language models”, the type that powers OpenAI’s seminal ChatGPT generative AI app, according to Tencent.