Zoho To Develop AI Model To Compete With Google, OpenAI
Zoho, an Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, is in the process of developing its own large language model (LLM) similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's PaLM 2 models, according to a media report.
The project is being led by Zoho's Founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu, with active involvement from the company's research and development (R&D) team.
In the report, Praval Singh, Zoho's Vice President of Marketing and Customer Experience, explained that the company has been working on artificial intelligence (AI) for a decade. When customers expressed the need for ChatGPT integration, Zoho responded by integrating it with 13 of their applications. Singh further mentioned that in addition to the integration with ChatGPT in the short term, Zoho is also working on developing their own proprietary large language models capable of summarization, paraphrasing, and adaptation to new tasks.
Zoho's decision to create its own LLMs follows controversial comments made by Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI. Altman had expressed skepticism about an Indian startup with USD10 million in funding being able to build a foundational LLM. However, Altman later clarified that his statement was taken out of context. This exchange sparked a response from CP Gurnani, the CEO of Tech Mahindra, who saw Altman's comment as a challenge.
In a related development, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar emphasised that Sam Altman does not have the final say in India's plans for AI-related growth.
