On August 30, four prominent Chinese tech companies, namely Baidu, Baichuan Smart Technology, SenseTime, and Zhipu AI, unveiled their AI chatbots for public use. These launches came shortly after they received official approval from the Chinese government on August 15, aligning with the recently enacted AI legislation.
To secure government approval, companies must provide security assessments and evidence that they meet specific criteria. There are 24 guidelines in total, including mandates for labeling content generated by humans and holding service providers accountable for content created through their platform forms.
According to local reports, another 11 companies have also gained government approval for their AI products, including industry giants like ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and Tencent Holdings. Baidu's new chatbot, Ernie Bot, has been likened to Microsoft-back ed OpenAI's popular ChatGPT.
Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, expressed the company's goal to collect valuable real-world human feedback by making Ernie Bot accessible to hundreds of millions of internet users. It's worth noting that OpenAI's ChatGPT is unavailable in China due to geo-blocking enforce ed by the Chinese government, which also requires local social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo to block access to the platform.
Before the introduction of government regulations, companies could only conduct limited public tests of their AI products. The new rules have expanded testing opportunities and enabled the introduction of more features.
In addition to chatbots, China has been actively promoting AI development in other areas, such as language models, with tech giant Alibaba releasing two open-source AI models with 7 billion parameters each, aimed at competing with Meta's Llama 2. These efforts underscore China's Commitment to rivaling the advancements in AI seen in the United States.
