😺 Alibaba's ChatGPT competitor

PLUS: top 50 AI startups

Welcome, humans.

This is The Neuron, where we hold your hand through AI like a full-body roller coaster restraint.

Here’s what’s going on in the world of AI today:

Alibaba launches ChatGPT competitor, but ... 🇨🇳
Forbes' top 50 AI startups 🥇
Tom Brady's AI performs comedy 😹
An AI that writes emails when you speak to it ✒️

Alibaba Launches ChatGPT Competitor 🤺

Alibaba is launching its generative AI model, Tongyi Qianwen, to be deployed across its business enterprise units.

It's starting with a broad rollout within specific Alibaba applications:

Tongyi is already being demoed in Alibaba's Slack clone to summarize chats, draft culture slogans, and transform charts into apps (like GPT's napkin demo).
It's also being integrated into Alibaba's smart voice assistant Tmall Genie.

Next, Alibaba is set to offer fine-tuned models-as-a-service (MaaS?!) to its enterprise customers, enabling them to train their models using their own data (like Einstein GPT).

But the CCP is saying not so fast...

Mere hours post-announcement, China's leading internet authority unveiled a series of regulatory actions to govern how Chinese companies like Alibaba can use AI.

The draft mandates that companies register their models with the internet authority, capture user identities, and store data inputs. In other words, disclose everything and stay in line:

“Content generated by generative artificial intelligence should embody core socialist values and must not contain any content that subverts state power, advocates the overthrow of the socialist system, incites splitting the country or undermines national unity,."

Cyberspace Administration of China

Why it matters: While it's a huge move, all indications suggest that the future of Chinese AI developments will ultimately be hampered by the CCP. Disobey, and you might just find your billionaire CEO disappearing without a trace.

Forbes Top 50 AI Startups 🧭️

Forbes announced its annual list of the 50 most promising privately-help AI companies.

The list is brimming with big names we know and love, but it also includes a handful of intriguing ones that have slipped under the radar.

One startup, Descript (worth $525 million), uses AI to remove awkward pauses and "ums" from videos and podcasts. Um, pretty cool.
Slightly further along is Snorkel, which uses AI to label raw data for five of the top 10 U.S. banks.

AI is in every industry. The list includes startups integrating AI into medicine, defense, video, legal contracts, and even weeding tractors (whatever that means).

It's also still really early. Compared to the Forbes' Cloud 100 list - which covers "regular" SaaS - the AI 50 companies are younger and smaller. Meaning there's a whole batch of even earlier companies that are just now picking up steam.

Still, this year's AI 50 is putting up big numbers regarding funding ($27.2 billion). Let's see who stays on the list a year from now...

Around the Horn 🦄

Microsoft's head of advertising teased Bing Chat Plugins, similar to ChatGPT's recently launched plugins feature.
Elon Musk bought roughly 10,000 GPUs for a reportedly massive AI project within Twitter.
An AI program called Dudesy put together an hour-long comedy special performed by an AI version of Tom Brady.
The Biden administration is discussing potential AI regulations like model audits before public release.
In San Francisco? Looks like there's going to be an AI conference May 15-19. Apply here.

Treats To Try 🍿

Chat with your favorite LLaMA models all in one place on LlamaChat.
Configure and deploy autonomous AI agents in your browser using AgentGPT.
MemoryGPT is like ChatGPT that remembers what you've talked about before.
Oasis lets you generate emails, speeches, and scripts just by talking to it.
AirOps lets you customize and run AI apps anywhere at scale.
Cheff generates endless recipes suited to your particular needs.

DM us links on Twitter: @nonmayorpete & @noahedelman02.

Wednesday Wirings 💸

Infogrid raised $90 million for its AI platform that analyses data to make buildings more sustainable.
Covariant snagged $75 million in additional funding for its AI robotic picking tech.
Everstream, which leverages AI to analyze data in supply chain management, raised $50 million.
Carbon Robotics secured $30 million in funding to expand sales of AI-powered machines that eradicate weeds.
Perplexity raised $26 million for its AI search engine and iOS app.