iFlytek (科大讯飞, 002230.SZ), one of China’s voice recognition giants, yesterday dispelled what it said were “rumors” accusing the AI heavyweight of copying ChatGPT.
In an exchange filing, the Hefei-headquartered powerhouse replied to investors who queried the firm about online claims that its self-developed large language model (LLM) xinghuo renzhi is a complete imitation of OpenAI’s immensely popular AI chatbot.
“This (claim) is not just unfounded but also illogical,” said iFlytek.
The company released its LLM model, which it said is one of the many Chinese answers to ChatGPT, on May 6.
Following its launch, the model has been dogged by controversy, with some commentators comparing it with ChatGPT and labeling it as a mere “knockoff.”
The reason behind these attacks might be that users of the model occasionally come across phrases such as “I was developed by OpenAI” in answers that popped up in xinghuo renzhi.
This fueled conjecture that the firm either replicated ChatGPT or that it used a large quantity of prompts such as OpenAI and ChatGPT in training its own model.
In response, iFlytek dismissed in yesterday’s filing the broadsides directed against it, saying that xinghuo renzhi could not have outpaced ChatGPT were it just a crude “imitation.”
It even boasted that its model scores better than ChatGPT in key metrics such as textual generation, online quizzes and math capabilities.
Asked how iFlytek will go about commercializing the LLM, the firm said it has been installed via an API on all of its products unveiled at the May 6 event. They included learning tool, netbook, smart recorder, voice transcriber, car-human interaction and digital employee.
More than 3,000 corporate developers from 36 industries have expressed an interest in partnering with iFlytek at the product launch, the company said in the filing.
