The November approvals have gone to a diverse group of products and applications, spanning a variety of industries, according to a document published by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the national internet watchdog. Licences have been granted to GenAI models for legal services, medical research, educational tech and online gaming, among other use cases.
China’s market for GenAI – algorithms that create new content in the form of text, images, audio and video – has been rife with competition in the two years since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, as the country’s Big Tech firms and start-ups rushed into the market with their own AI models and services.
To be released to the Chinese public, a GenAI model must receive the green light from Beijing under the country’s licensing system. All 252 approved GenAI services so far are from domestic companies.
