Beijing bans the use of the chat developed by the American company OpenAi, which allows humans to communicate with an artificial intelligence system. Baidu is about to launch its own version; Alibaba develops its own. The problem of censorship and control of public opinion in China. Taiwan wants to offer its own “democratic” alternative to Chinese-speaking communities.
Beijing () – China wants to have its own version of Chat GPT, the chatbot based on generative artificial intelligence developed by the American high-tech company OpenAI. Responding to the order of the state authorities in charge of censorship, the Chinese Internet search engine Baidu will launch its own model in March: Ernie Bot.
A chatbot is a chat capable of generating human-like responses to complex questions: it allows interaction with an artificial intelligence system, especially for word processing.
In addition to Baidu, the other Chinese tech giant Alibaba is also developing its own chatbot. Analysts point out that the Chinese Communist Party wants to block the spread in the country of artificial intelligence tools that cannot be controlled by censorship and that escape the official public opinion management regime. In essence, the Beijing leadership fears that the contents of tools such as Chat Gpt will reach social networks, spreading “disinformation” and favoring the interests of a foreign power (the United States).
Following the immediate government crackdown, Chat Gpt can only be used in China by circumventing the “Great Firewall” that regulates internal Internet censorship. According to Nikkei Asia, authorities have warned Tencent and Ant Group not to install the US chatbot on their platforms: the former runs the well-known messaging site WeChat; the second is the financial arm of Alibaba.
Critics of Beijing’s efforts argue that focusing on censorship will lead to the development of a distorted tool, far from Western standards. Until now, China was considered to be at the forefront of artificial intelligence development, but the launch of Chat Gpt has changed the scenery. Despite the blow, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Chinese research institutes continue to lead studies of 37 of the 44 most advanced technologies in the world.
A problem for the Chinese chatbot will be the recruitment of competent personnel in the sector. It seems China-based companies are trying to bring back Chinese technicians who work for OpenAI and other technology companies abroad. Many of them left their country attracted by higher salaries.
In something of an information war, Taiwan has also said it is ready to create its own chatbot: in Taipei’s view, it will have to offer services that can deal with Chinese-produced artificial intelligence systems.
In just over two months since its launch, Chat Gpt has gained 100 million users worldwide. Converse in English, while the Beijing models will communicate in Simplified Chinese. Taiwan’s goal is to offer Chinese-speaking communities an alternative “democratic” chatbot to the “censored” one in China.
