SHENZHEN, China (Sept 7): Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd has officially unveiled its proprietary large foundation model, dubbed ‘Hunyuan’, for business use.

Notably, the Shenzhen-headquartered internet and technology company is integrating Hunyuan's capabilities with its existing products for video conferencing and social media.

Hunyuan supports functions spanning the creation of images, copywriting, text recognition and customer service, which are used in industries such as finance, public services, social media, e-commerce, transportation and games.

Tencent operates Weixin, a widely used messaging and payments app in China, and its sister app WeChat, which is designed for overseas users, as well as video conference platform Tencent Meeting.

Hunyuan, a ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot, is now open to enterprises in China for testing and building apps via application programming interfaces (APIs) on Tencent Cloud.

“In launching ‘Hunyuan’ and making it available to domestic enterprises, Tencent has opted for an approach that balances the exciting performance of consumer-facing, large-model AI-powered chatbots, with the pragmatic need for the business community to increase operational efficiencies, reduce costs, protect privacy as well as proprietary data,” Tencent senior executive vice-president Dowson Tong said in the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit (DES) 2023 held at Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Centre on Thursday.

Enterprises in China may now access Hunyuan via Tencent’s public cloud platform and fine tune it to their specific needs, Tong said.

The new platform features Chinese language processing abilities and advanced logical reasoning, and comes with task execution abilities.

Hunyuan has been connected to 50 of Tencent’s own products, including Tencent Cloud, Tencent Advertising, Tencent Games, Tencent Fintech, Tencent Meeting, Tencent Docs, Weixin Search, QQ Browser, and other core offerings.

For instance, Tencent Meeting now features a Hunyuan-powered AI assistant and can perform complex tasks such as generating relevant meeting minutes, by processing natural language instructions and prompts from users.

According to Tencent vice-president Jie Jiang, the company has entered the era of the “comprehensive embrace of large models”, with Tencent having evolved over the years from model algorithms to machine learning frameworks, and now, to AI infrastructure.

Organised by Tencent Cloud and Smart Industries Group, the DES is Tencent’s most prestigious and largest strategic event in the field of industrial internet.

The summit brings Tencent leaders and ecosystem partners together to showcase the company’s latest solutions, share global insights, and present business success stories around the development of key technologies such as cloud computing, AI, big data and security.

It is worth noting that Tencent’s newly launched chatbot is in compliance with new Chinese regulations on generative AI, which came into effect on Aug 15.

In contrast to many other nations, China mandates that companies must undergo security assessments and obtain clearance before introducing mass-market AI products.

Previously, businesses were restricted to conducting limited public tests of their AI products.

However, authorities in China have recently ramped up their efforts to bolster companies engaged in AI development, in response to the growing importance of AI as a competitive focal point with the US.

Under the new rules, prior government authorisation is no longer required for products targeted at businesses.

In the past few weeks, various Chinese companies, including Baidu Inc and SenseTime Group Inc, have been granted approval to introduce AI-powered chatbots to the public.

Tencent has to-date built over 400 customised solutions for more than 10,000 partners — jointly serving two million customers in their digital transformation journey.

Over the past 12 months, shares of Tencent have gained 10%, to close at HK$326.80 (RM194.98), giving it a market capitalisation of HK$3.12 trillion.