Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) companies are moving quickly to attract users of OpenAI’s technology following reports that the US company plans to restrict access in China and other countries to its application programming interface (API), a platform that allows developers of other products to integrate their AI models.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI plans to block access to technology used to build AI products for entities in China and some other countries, China’s state-run newspaper Securities Times reported on Tuesday.
ChatGPT is not available in mainland China, but many Chinese startups are able to access OpenAI’s API platform and use it to build their own applications, the Securities Times said.
“We are taking additional steps to block API traffic from regions where we do not support access to OpenAI’s services,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters.
Since late Monday, Chinese users of the platform have received emails warning them that they are in a “region that OpenAI does not currently support” and that additional measures to block API traffic from unsupported regions will be implemented starting July 9.
In response, China’s leading AI developer Baidu said it would launch an “inclusion program”, offering new users a free migration to its Earny platform.
For OpenAI users, Baidu will provide additional Earnie 3.5 flagship model tokens, matching the scale of their OpenAI usage, Baidu’s cloud unit said in a statement. The tokens are units of text processed by the AI model.
Alibaba Cloud has also joined in, offering free tokens and migration services for OpenAI API users through its AI platform. According to Alibaba, the company’s Quen-Plus model costs significantly less than GPT-4.
Zhipu AI, another major player in China’s AI space, announced a “special migration program” for OpenAI API users.
“Our GLM model is fully benchmarked with OpenAI’s product ecosystem,” Zhipu AI said in a statement to developers seen by Reuters. “With our completely self-developed technology, we ensure safety and controllability.”
Over the past year, several Chinese companies have released chatbots powered by their own AI models.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)