Data Drop: 3 Charts on the Impact of Generative AI on Tech Giants in China

China was caught off guard when OpenAI’s generative AI (genAI) tool, ChatGPT, captivated the world in 2022. China’s tech industry was already reeling from regulatory crackdowns, and the US-imposed export restrictions on advanced semiconductors dealt another blow to the country’s AI ambitions.

To underscore the intensity of the US-China rivalry, OpenAI recently further tightened access to its technology by cutting off application programming interface (API) access in China, where its services were only unofficially available. Cutting off access affects developers who had been relying on it for building applications—and are now turning to domestic alternatives.

Tech companies in China found themselves in an unfavorable position and worked nonstop to get back into the race. Their efforts appear to be bearing fruit.

China’s tech giants are turning the corner in the AI race

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China-based companies filed six times as many genAI-related patents as the US between 2014 and 2023.

In September 2023, Alibaba-owned retail site Taobao launched AI shopping assistant Wenwen to improve customers’ shopping experience. It also rolled out other AI tools to help merchants generate images and text, analyze market data, and enhance customer service. Alibaba’s open-source large language model (LLM), Qwen2, was recently ranked at the top of Hugging Face’s Open LLM Leaderboard, based on 15 benchmarks.

Among marketers in China, content and creative ideas generation is the most popular genAI use case, according to a May 2024 iResearch Consulting Group survey.