China, caught off guard by the popularity and innovation surrounding  OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is taking steps to suppress the software, and answer with a CCP approved alternative.

China has ordered companies to stop offering services and applications built off the ChatGPT AI engine, according to Benzinga.

Though OpenAI officially bans Chinese based firms from using their AI service, many Chinese companies found ways to circumvent the ban, The Wall Street Journal noted.

The announcement by China’s government sent Chinese tech stocks lower.

Meanwhile, Baidu, China’s largest search engine company, announced they are readying a natural language AI integration named “Ernie” for their search platform.

The company said it expected to begin rolling out the new feature this March.

China AI Not Chat Optimized

China’s move was more or less seen as a way of advantaging Baidu in its efforts to offer a home-grown alternative to the phenomenon of OpenAi’s product.

Tech experts have noted that China’s AI efforts have not focused as much on Large Language Model (LLM) AI systems as American companies like OpenAI and Google.

Their AI has tended to focus more on visual and other forms of surveillance applications, according to the WSJ. 

But Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent do have chatbot development programs, and these companies will likely benefit, at least narrowly, from China’s official ban of OpenAI’s product.

Earlier versions of ChatGPT have existed for years and have been used in various apps. 

But when OpenAI offered access to the newest version as a free beta preview to the public in November 2022, millions of users flocked to the platform. Many marveled at ChatGPT’s abilities in answering questions and generating relatively long-form natural language content.

When Microsoft, already an investor in OpenAI, took the plunge and integrated ChatGPT technology as a feature of its Bing search engine, the ChatGPT sensation caught a fresh wave.

The program has not been without considerable controversy. Some have focused on sometimes wild misstatements, false information, and “unsafe” biases they say the program exhibits.

Others have argued the program is banally woke and comically limited, in an attempt to make it uncontroversial.

Other serious implications have emerged, as people have begun to realize that generative AI systems that can converse like humans, and can digest information on a scale that no human possibly can, represent technology that will potentially transform and outmode current paradigms and occupations.

As The Trends Journal has noted, there are also prospects that the AI revolution will concentrate wealth and power into the hands of technocratic corporations even far more than is currently the case.