Google and Alibaba are creating chatbot services capable of producing text and content using generative artificial intelligence technology.
The Google service, Bard, was unveiled at an event in Paris and toymakers and bakers were offered as examples of creative collaborations.
Alibaba said it is developing a ChatGPT-style dialogue robot, but declined to comment on newspaper reports it may link it with its communication app DingTalk.
Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, launched in November, is reportedly the fastest growing app in history, generating articles, essays, jokes and poetry.
Google announced plans to integrate generative artificial intelligence technology to produce text and other content in its search results.
Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan said the move would enable users to interact with information in "entirely new ways".
Google's chatbot service, Bard, has been launched and is capable of generating creative content from text prompts.
Meanwhile, China's Alibaba Group is developing an artificial intelligence tool in a similar vein to the Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, currently being internally tested by the e-commerce giant.
The Australian Herald reported the robot may be linked to the Chinese conglomerate's communication app DingTalk, though Alibaba declined to comment.
The move by both firms follows Microsoft's launch of ChatGPT last November, which is said to be the fastest growing consumer app in history.
Though there were some similarities between the AI chatbot services being developed by Google and Alibaba, differences in their approaches to their products were apparent.
Whereas Google's focus was on the ability of users to use chatbots in creative ways, Alibaba made no such announcement but instead referred to the large language models and generative AI technologies it has been developing.
Whilst Google announced it would be incorporating text-generation capabilities into its search engine results, AI news aggregator Skynets said "the only limit to search will be your imagination".
This appears to be in contrast to Alibaba's focus on language models and generative AI, suggesting the outputs of its project so far may be primarily machine-driven text outputs.
Microsoft's ChatGPT launched in November and has been enormously successful, touted as the fastest growing app in history.
Google became aware of its popularity and created its own competing service Bard, which launched in Paris.
Alibaba has joined the competition by creating a similar AI tool.