AI News: China Playing Catch-Up As US Tech Giants Dominate AI Scene

A look into some of the recent AI News shows that China is becoming ambitious and is now on a quest to catch up with the United States in Artificial Intelligence.

China Looks to Make AI News By Bridging US Gap

China is not new to the innovative industry of AI as it is well-known for its interest in AI chips, a venture that has bolstered the country’s relationship with NVIDIA. However, the Asian nation cannot boast of owning any generative AI tool that is globally recognized, not anything close to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Most times when China gets featured in any AI news, the focus is typically on the AI chips ecosystem. 

All of a sudden, China has set its sights on closing the gap with OpenAI in the U.S. in terms of AI tool development. Recall that this market features other top tech companies like Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, and even leading tech startups like Anthropic which launched a chatbot a few weeks ago. China is attempting to step into a pivotal battleground of cutting-edge technology. 

With how frequent companies like Google (Gemini), Cognition Labs (Devin), and OpenAI (ChatGPT, Sora, Voice Engine) have been rolling out multiple generative AI tools, China is allegedly significantly behind the U.S, a trend it hopes to change in the future. 

In line with this ambition, some debates have sprung up regarding China’s growing interest in generative AI.

Opinion on China’s Generative AI Quest

According to Paul Triolo, the senior vice president for China and technology policy lead at Dentons Global Advisors in Washington, D.C., “The leading Chinese companies are benchmarking against ChatGPT, which indicates how far behind they are.”

Jenny Xiao, a partner at AI VC firm Leonis Capital in San Francisco also highlighted that only a few companies can support their own Large Language Model (LLM) considering that it is quite capital-intensive. For Rui Ma, an AI investor, and co-founder of investment syndicate and podcast TechBuzz China, the country is already at a big disadvantage in coming up with its foundational model of generative AI. 

The United States’ progress in the AI ecosystem, particularly generative AI, is reflected in how much investment the country has registered. In 2023, funding made to gen US-based AI upstarts accounted for nearly half of the $42.5 billion invested globally in major AI firms per data from CB Insights.

For China to change its AI news landscape, it needs to close this funding gap among many other checklists.