UAE, US Strengthen AI Partnership; Alibaba, Baidu Slash Chatbot Model Costs

The UAE and the US are set to deepen their AI investments, while Alibaba and Baidu announce substantial reductions in chatbot model costs.

US and UAE to Boost AI Investments

Emirates state minister for AI Omar Sultan Al Olama announced on Tuesday that the United States and the United Arab Emirates will increase their investments in artificial intelligence as part of a strategic partnership.

As the Gulf nation seeks to diversify away from oil and gas, the UAE, led by government-backed firm G42, has made substantial investments in AI to become a global leader.

Al Olama told Reuters during an event in Dubai, "In terms of our investments, since the US is now considering the UAE as a strategic partner, and the UAE is reciprocating that by considering the US as a strategic partner, you will see more deals naturally."

Under the agreement, which the two companies claimed was supported by security assurances to the governments of the United States and the United Arab Emirates, G42 would host its AI applications on Microsoft cloud services.

This collaboration occurred amid Washington's endeavors to impede Beijing's technological progress. Concerning any possible divestiture of Chinese tech companies by the UAE, Al Olama stated, "government-to-government the UAE is a neutral country, and in that sense, we are going to be a country that allows the world to do business in the UAE."

Alibaba, Baidu Lower Prices for AI Chatbot Models

Meanwhile, as the price war in China's cloud computing sector heats up, Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu reduced the prices of large-language models (LLMs) used to fuel generative artificial intelligence products on Tuesday.

Yahoo Finance reports that Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi Qwen LLMs now have prices as low as 97%, according to the company. For example, with the price reduction, its Qwen-Long model will only cost 0.0005 yuan for every 1,000 tokens or units of data processed by the LLM, down from 0.02 yuan per 1,000 tokens.

Only a short time after, Baidu made a similar announcement, saying that all business users would get their hands on the Ernie Lite and Ernie Speed models for free.

China has witnessed a surge in investment in large language models in response to the successful debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022. Many Chinese cloud vendors have turned to AI chatbot services to drive sales.

Photo: Microsoft Bing