The Biden administration plans to place limitations in the models of artificial intelligence (AI) developed in USA that power popular chatbots like ChatGPT to protect technology from countries like China e Russia. But China over the past year has built its own domestic generative AI industry and has been encouraging its companies to avoid foreign technology.
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Core AI services OpenAISuch as ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E, have not been officially released in mainland China. A spokesperson for OpenAI told Reuters last year that they were unable to do so in certain countries due to local “conditions”.
However, many companies and engineers have accessed the services of OpenAI using proxy tools like virtual private networks (VPN) to mask your network addresses.
In this way, many Chinese companies have been able to build software and applications based on Chinese models. OpenAI. Chinese companies also frequently compare their own AI models with those of OpenAI.
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A OpenAI blocked Chinese companies from accessing its service. Last December, the OpenAI suspended the account of ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, after technology website The Verge reported that ByteDance used TikTok's technology OpenAI to develop your own AI.
In Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, access to AI models OpenAI it is also restricted, but not airtight. Although the services of OpenAI are not available there, the Microsoft, an investor and partner of OpenAI, launched the Copilot, a generative AI service built with the latest technology from OpenAI, for the public. By associating with Microsoft, companies can also gain access to AI models from OpenAI.
The US Commerce Department's initiative aims to export proprietary, or closed-source, AI models whose software and the data they are trained on are kept secret, the sources told Reuters. Open source models areariam outside the scope of export controls.
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However, China has relied heavily on many open source models developed in the West, such as China's “Llama” series. MetaPlatforms.
In March, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a top-tier research laboratory, was quoted by Chinese state media as saying that most native Chinese AI models were, in fact, built using Meta's Llama models and that this represented a key challenge for China's AI development.
The laboratory told Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the time that China “seriously lacks autonomy” in this area.
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In November 2023, 01.AI, one of China's most prominent AI unicorns founded by former AI executive Google Lee Kai-fu, faced a huge backlash after some AI engineers discovered that his Yi-34B AI model was built on Meta's Llama system.
That said, many Chinese technology companies such as Baidu, Huawei and iFlytek, have been working to develop their own “completely proprietary” AI models. Some of them claim that their models have become as capable as the latest GPT4 model from OpenAI in several areas.
Chinese authorities, in line with an order from Chinese President Xi Jinping to develop technological self-sufficiency, have emphasized the need for the country to develop its own “controllable” AI technology.
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State-owned newspaper China Daily said in a post last February on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo that the ChatGPT “could lend a hand to the US government in its dissemination of disinformation and manipulation of global narratives for its own geopolitical interests.”
The country has also been proactive in implementing regulations on the use of generative AI, requiring services to obtain government approval before being released to the public. As of January, China had approved more than 40 AI models for public use, but none of them were of foreign origin.
Last April, a senior Hong Kong government official also said the city has no plans to allow the use of ChatGPT within local government.
The Chinese government's positive sentiment towards US generative AI technology has mainly been aimed at comparing how far behind China is behind the US in AI development, rather than encouraging US AI technology.
At the country's annual parliamentary meeting last March, a minister used a football analogy to describe the country's great leadership. ChatGPT about Chinese AI products.
“Playing football involves dribbling and shooting, but it is not easy to be as good as Messi,” said Chinese Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang, referring to Argentine star Lionel Messi.
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