Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, announced on Monday the launch of its own chatbot – GigaChat – to compete with the ChatGPT chatbot developed by US company OpenAI and other similar artificial intelligence systems, AFP and News.ro reported.

The Russian company has announced that it is “launching its own version” of a conversational bot called “GigaChat”, which it claims is a “first” in Russia, and expressed its satisfaction with the success in a statement published on its website, in which it said at the same time that this information the tool at the first stage will be “available in test mode (only) by invitation”.

According to its creators, GigaChat can “have a conversation, write texts, answer factual questions”, as well as “write computer codes” and “create images based on descriptions”.

According to the CEO of the Sber group, Herman Gref, who in recent years has made efforts to lead the conglomerate in the direction of new technologies, the launch of this talking robot “is progress for the entire vast universe of Russian technologies.”

For several years, and especially since the imposition of extremely tough sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine, Russia has sought to strengthen its digital “sovereignty” while tightening its laws governing the Internet as part of an effort to stamp out any form of dissent.

In recent months, the Kremlin has called for the blocking of websites and social networks, a means of censoring all dissident publications on the topic of its military offensive in Ukraine.

After the explosive popularity of ChatGPT after its launch at the end of last year, many Chinese technology companies such as Baidu, Alibaba or ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, have announced that they are working on their own chatbot model.

But the Chinese government has already drawn up a set of rules that these domestic chatbots will have to follow regarding the answers they give to those who ask them questions.