Grab announces collaboration with OpenAI to ‘build and deploy advanced AI solutions’

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SINGAPORE: Tech firms Grab and OpenAI announced on Thursday ( May 30 ) that they will” collaborate to build and deploy” advanced artificial intelligence ( AI ) solutions.

Grab said the partnership is the&nbsp, first of its kind for OpenAI in Southeast Asia and that it would get OpenAI’s resources to “partner on options” for people in the region.

This will be focused primarily on three places: Accessibility, user support and mapping.

” Get will make use of state-of-the-art language and tone capabilities to produce Grab’s services more accessible to all users, especially the visually impaired or the elderly who may otherwise find it difficult to navigate the on-screen app interface,” said the company.

Additionally, it may look into using AI to create chatbots for customer service that “better understand user problems and help overcome them more quickly.”

Through greater technology and higher-quality data extraction from physical images, Grab will” seek to use OpenAI’s vision capabilities” to improve its map-making efforts.

” This means GrabMaps may be updated yet faster, delivering a better practice to consumers and motorist- partners”, said the ride- hailing app company.

Additionally, Grab intends to run an original pilot of ChatGPT Enterprise among” find employees.”

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Singapore’s Grab cuts 1,000 jobs, or 11% of workforce

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The “superapp”, founded in 2012, offers deliveries, rides and financial services in eight Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Its shares were up 4.7 per cent premarket after Tan’s announcement to staff. The stock had climbed as much as 5.6 per cent premarket, extending earlier gains on a Bloomberg News report of the cuts.

In May, Grab reported a quarterly loss of US$250 million but said revenue in the first quarter of this year rose 130.3 per cent to US$525 million from a year ago.

In February, it issued an upbeat forecast for full-year revenue for 2023 and brought forward its profitability timeline.

The US-listed Grab’s last job cuts were in 2020, when 360 people were laid off in response to the impact of the pandemic. The company had 11,934 staff as of the end of 2022, including about 2,000 from its acquisition of a grocery chain last year, its latest annual report said.

In September last year, it said it had no plans to undertake mass layoffs despite the weak market. In December, Tan told staff the company was freezing most hiring, payrises for senior managers, and cutting travel and expense budgets.

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