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China is leading other countries in generative AI inventions such as chatbots as it submitted six times more patents than the nearest competitor, the U.S., Reuters reported citing U.N. data.
Patent filings related to Generative AI saw more than 50,000 applications submitted in the past decade. About one-fourth of these were filed in 2023 itself, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, the report added.
Over 38,000 Generative AI inventions were submitted by China between 2014-2023 compared to 6,276 filed by the U.S. across the same period, WIPO noted.
WIPO Patent Analytics Manager Christopher Harrison told reporters that the Chinese patent applications covered vast sectors, which included autonomous driving, publishing, document management. the report noted.
South Korea came in third followed by Japan and then India, with India growing at the fastest rate, according to the data.
Top applicants included China’s TikTok owner ByteDance (BDNCE), Alibaba (BABA) and Microsoft (MSFT), which has backed ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
“The patent data suggests this is an area that is going to have a profound impact across many different industrial sectors going forward,” said Harrison noted, also highlighting the healthcare sector where GenAI-created molecules could potentially speed up drug development.
WIPO expects a series of patents to be submitted soon and intends to release a future update of the data, potentially 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, which can provide services such as content, image, video and voice generation, to name a few.
Alibaba’s (BABA) Qwen2.5, Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, and Tongyi Wanxiang, Baidu’s (BIDU) Ernie Bot and Tencent’s (OTCPK:TCEHY) (OTCPK:TCTZF) Hunyuan are some of the LLMs, among the many, being developed.