As the global competition for AI technology intensifies, Chinese apps have removed ChatGPT due to its description of alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang. The AI chatbot accurately described the Chinese government’s alleged actions in the western region of China, including mass detentions and forced labor, which has been repeatedly denied by Beijing. This has led to recent state media articles criticizing the rise of the text generator and calling for stricter regulations. The removal of the digital assistant has caused a drop in shares for several Chinese tech companies, including Beijing Haitian Ruisheng Science Technology, Hanwang Technology, and Beijing Deep Glint Technology, all of which develop and produce AI products and services.

Global AI race

ChatGPT gained popularity when it was introduced in December due to its capacity to produce comprehensive and detailed responses to queries, although sometimes with inaccuracies. It has since been employed to produce content for a news outlet, generate abstracts for research papers that tricked certain scientists, and even cleared postgraduate law and business examinations, albeit with below-average scores. The introduction of the intelligent chatbot has raised concerns about potential long-term consequences, particularly with regards to its impact on education and the potential for students to cheat on assignments.

China has been known to impose restrictions on major Western websites and applications like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, leading some to accuse it of digital protectionism. This has allowed Chinese tech companies to grow into major international players, with many now focusing on AI technology. In February, Alibaba announced that it was testing its own ChatGPT-style tool, although the company did not provide any details on when it would launch. Fudan University in China also developed their own version called MOSS, which went viral and caused the platform to crash due to high user traffic.

Baidu CEO Robin Li stated that the rollout of MOSS would “create a new entry point for the next-generation internet,” and he expects more businesses to build their own models and applications on their AI cloud.