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China’s tech giants are launching ChatGPT clones — and Beijing is watching closely



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Chinese technology giants over the past week have announced their intentions to launch ChatGPT-style products, joining the artificial intelligence arms race sparked by the popular chatbot.But announcements from China’s biggest firms have not said they are working on all-encompassing platforms like the U.S.’ ChatGPT, a move which could worry Beijing which heavily censors internet content. Instead, companies from Alibaba to NetEase have spoken about the technology in application-specific scenarios.”Given all the regulatory focus on both tech platforms and AI algorithms over the past year by a range of government bodies, the big tech platforms are not eager to draw attention to themselves by putting out a chatbot/generative AI tool that gets them in hot water,” Paul Triolo, the technology policy lead at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge, told CNBC.ChatGPT is developed by U.S. firm OpenAI. The product allows people to type questions and receive answers on a huge range of topics. It is an example of generative AI, which is trained on huge amounts of data, and can generate text-based responses or even images.Chinese authorities have heavy control over internet content, often blocking sites or censoring content that does not sit well with Beijing. ChatGPT is not officially blocked in China but OpenAI does not allow users in the country to sign up.The fact that ChatGPT will answer questions on sensitive topics in China is likely a concern to Beijing’s authorities.”ChatGPT poses some unique challenges for Beijing. The app, trained on western uncensored data, represents a more powerful type of search engine than Google or others that are also uncensored outside of China,” Triolo said, adding that he “would not be surprised” if the service was eventually blocked in the world’s second-largest economy.China’s ChatGPT responseBaidu, Alibaba, JD.com and NetEase, some …

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