(Yicai) Feb. 6 -- Alibaba Group Holding has hired Singaporean artificial intelligence scientist Steven Hoi as vice president to lead its consumer-facing AI business, technology news website Zhidx.Com reported today.

Hoi will focus on basic multimodal models in Alibaba's AI to Consumer business, as well as basic research and application solutions related to AI agents, insiders at the Hangzhou-based firm told Zhidx.Com. The company is building a premier AI algorithm research and engineering team to attract top industry talent, the report added.

Hoi brings more than 20 years of AI research experience. He previously taught at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University. He has published over 300 AI academic papers and in 2019 was elected an IEEE Fellow, the highest honor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an American technical professional organization.

Hoi also has management experience, having served as managing director of Salesforce's Asian research arm. In 2023, he founded HyperGAI, a startup developing multimodal models for image and video generation.

Alibaba has joined other Chinese tech companies in developing large language models to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. The e-commerce giant released its self-developed LLM Tongyi Qianwen in April 2023 and announced plans to integrate it across all its products, including Tmall, Taobao, office platform DingTalk, and navigation service Amap.

Editor: Emmi Laine