iFlytek unveils the SparkDesk large language model

Background

In 2023 ChatGPT drew wide attention around the world. On 6 May 2023 iFlytek, the Chinese information technology company, unveiled SparkDesk, which it presented as its answer to ChatGPT.^[1] The model was aimed at education and enterprise uses.^[1]

Enterprise deployment means that a company installs or connects a model inside its own operations, such as customer service, internal documents or software tools. Testing a new system with a first batch of users before wider use is a common approach.

Many companies that launched large language models in this period wanted to show that their systems could match or beat ChatGPT in particular tasks. Such comparisons are only meaningful when the test method is public and independent evaluators can repeat them, which is why unverified company claims should be read with care.

ChatGPT is a chatbot that generates text in response to a user's requests. Its appearance made large language models widely known to the public, and it became the reference point for other companies releasing similar systems.

What happened

Chairman Liu Qingfeng said the model already beat ChatGPT in text generation, knowledge question answering and math. He promised that it would achieve parity with ChatGPT in English by October 2023.^[1] These comparisons were the company's own claims.

iFlytek listed seven core capabilities for the launch model: text generation, language understanding, question answering, reasoning, math, coding and multimodal tasks.^[3]

Key details

In the first batch, more than 3,000 enterprises from 36 industries were to deploy the model.^[2] iFlytek set 24 October 2023 as the date by which Spark would surpass ChatGPT in Chinese.^[2]

The model was said to be built on Huawei Ascend AI chips.^[1]

Impact

The launch set the terms of iFlytek's public effort in large language models. The company pitched the model at two markets, schools and businesses, and set public dates for its performance targets. The comparisons with ChatGPT were not independently verified.