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China is leading other countries in AI inventions such as chatbots, filing six times as many patents as its closest competitor, the United States, Reuters reported, citing United Nations data.
Generative AI patent applications have seen over 50,000 applications Applications filed over the past decade. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, about a quarter of these applications were filed in 2023 itself. Added.
The World Intellectual Property Organization noted that China filed more than 38,000 AI inventions between 2014 and 2023, compared to 6,276 filed by the United States during the same period.
China’s patent applications cover a wide range of sectors, including autonomous driving, publishing and document management, Christopher Harrison, director of patent analysis at the World Intellectual Property Organization, told reporters, the report noted.
South Korea came in third, followed by Japan and then India, with India recording the fastest growth rate, according to the data.
Leading suitors include ByteDance (BDNCE), owner of Chinese app TikTok, Alibaba (BABA), and Microsoft (MSFT), which backed OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
“The patent data suggests that this is an area that will have a profound impact on many different industries in the future,” Harrison said, also highlighting the healthcare sector where molecules created by GenAI could accelerate drug development.
WIPO expects a series of patent filings soon, and plans to release a future update of the data, possibly using generative AI, to show the trend.
Generative AI services have taken the world by storm since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. Globally, companies have launched their own large language models, or LLMs, that can provide services such as content generation, images, video, and audio, to name a few.
Among the many machine learning programs being developed are Alibaba’s Qwen2.5, Baidu’s Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, Tongyi Wanxiang, and Ernie Bot, and Tencent’s Hunyuan (OTCPK:TCEHY) (OTCPK:TCTZF).