Zoho Builds Its Own Large Language Model To Take On OpenAI's Dominance

Zoho, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) giant, is developing its own large language model (LLM), similar to OpenAI‘s GPT and Google‘s PaLM 2 models.

What Happened? Per a MoneyControl report, Zoho’s founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu, supervises the project, which the company’s R&D team in India is working on.

Praval Singh, Zoho’s vice president of marketing and customer experience, said the company has been working on artificial intelligence for ten years. They have recently integrated ChatGPT with 13 of their apps to meet customers’ needs. In addition to integrating ChatGPT, they are developing their own LLMs capable of summarising, paraphrasing, and adapting to new tasks.

See also: OpenAI’s Sam Altman Surprised By PM Narendra Modi’s Enthusiasm For AI

Zoho’s LLM announcement follows a recent controversy involving a comment made by OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, who suggested it would be “hopeless” for an Indian startup with $10 million (₹82.12 crore) in funding to work on an LLM. Though Altman later clarified his quote was taken out of context, Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani saw it as a “challenge.”

In response to Altman’s remark, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated that Altman’s views are not the final say on India’s AI aspirations. There are numerous areas, he said, where he disagrees with the OpenAI founder, whose ChatGPT chatbot has gained immense popularity.

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