Chinese company wants to build AI model better than ChatGPT by October

SparkDesk versus ChatGPT

iFlytek's chairman, Liu Qingfeng, claims that the company has analyzed ChatGPT's primary directions and using information about the needs of their own customers has concluded that general AI needs seven core competencies. These are text generation, language understanding, question and answer, logical reasoning, mathematical ability, code ability, and multimodal ability.

During its live demonstration on Saturday, iFlytek showcased these seven competencies of SparkDesk. Apart from prompting the AI model to create stories using characters from two different time periods, the demonstration also showcased voice-recognition prompts, in both Chinese and English.

The company also said that the generative AI could perform a wide range of tasks such as composing emails, drafting press releases, and creating schedules, and was even better at generating long pieces of text when compared to ChatGPT. The company claims that SparkDesk is also better than ChatGPT in answering questions and mathematical ability but will surpass the OpenAI product by October this year.

IFlytek also shared applications of SparkDesk in areas such as education, automotive, office, and digital employees. This includes the use of AI for the correction of student essays, virtual tutors as a teaching aid for students, generating meeting minutes based on handwritten notes as well as smarter driving experiences. The AI model can also help employees perform repetitive tasks in their work environments, PanDaily reported.

Interestingly, iFlytek is among the companies barred from buying critical components from the U.S. by the Commerce Department's 2019 blacklist. The announcement of the chatbot also comes at a time when the Chinese internet regulator has published draft guidelines for the operation of generative AI services, Bloomberg reported.