After government approval, four Chinese tech companies, including Baidu Inc (9888.HK) and SenseTime Group (0200.HK), on Thursday made their artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots available to the general public. China’s government is pushing to expand the use of such products in order to compete with the US.
China’s top internet search engine, Baidu, announced in a statement that the public could now use Ernie Bot, a chatbot that resembles ChatGPT. By email, a SenseTime representative informed Reuters that their chatbot, SenseChat, was also now “fully available to serve all users”.
On Thursday, Zhipu AI and Baichuan Intelligent Technology, two other AI businesses, also announced comparable public launches. In the early hours of Hong Kong trading, shares of SenseTime and Baidu surged, rising 3.1% and 2.7%, respectively, while the overall market was trading 0.4 percent lower.
China, in contrast to other nations, demands that businesses submit security evaluations and obtain authorization before launching AI goods for the public market. As AI increasingly becomes a focus of competition with the United States, authorities have recently increased measures to encourage enterprises in their development.
According to Chinese media, the government had given its approval to 11 businesses, including Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) and TikTok owner ByteDance. Requests for comment regarding the companies’ AI plans were not immediately answered by either company. Other tech companies allegedly lacking regulatory authorisation include Alibaba Group (9988.HK), which is working on large-scale AI language models. A request for comment from Alibaba did not immediately receive a response.
According to tech-focused newspaper The Information, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, is on course to produce more than $1 billion in sales over the next 12 months.
The approvals were widely anticipated following China’s publication of a set of temporary regulations intended to control generative AI products for the general public, which became effective on August 15. Prior to the new laws, businesses could only test AI products on a modest scale in public, but as a result of adding more features and increasing marketing efforts, businesses have expanded the scope of their tests of AI goods. Products aimed for enterprises don’t need prior government clearance.
According to Shawn Yang, an analyst with Blue Lotus Capital Advisors, the government’s decision to approve AI goods could lead to industry consolidation. However, the sector may soon consolidate. “Many people were rushing into the large language model business,” he added. The only people who can advance are those with data and technical skills.