China leads US in GenAI patents

Reuters and staff reporter

China is far ahead of other countries in generative artificial intelligence inventions like chatbots, filing six times more patents than its closest rival the United States, data from the United Nations showed yesterday.

Generative AI, which produces text, images, computer code and even music from existing information, is exploding with more than 50,000 patent applications filed in the past decade, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, which oversees a system for countries to share recognition of patents.

"This is a booming area. This is an area that is growing at increasing speed. And it's somewhere that we expect to grow even more," Christopher Harrison, WIPO Patent Analytics Manager, told reporters.

More than 38,000 GenAI inventions were filed by China between 2014-2023 versus 6,276 filed by the United States over the same period, WIPO said.

Among the top applicants were China's ByteDance, which owns video app TikTok, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (9988) and Microsoft, a backer of startup OpenAI which created ChatGPT.

In other news, China's AI company SenseTime (0020) will release SenseNova 5.5 - the latest version of its gen AI chatbot - at this year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference kicking off today. Its shares jumped over 17 percent yesterday.