#时事热点头条说#
Baidu's Wenxin One Word bot ranks first in China's Apple App Store. Earlier, the Chinese tech giant announced the public release of its chatbot similar to ChatGPT. The news indicates that Beijing has let go, which is another sign of a looser stance on artificial intelligence policy.
Baidu released the Wenxin Yiyan bot on March 16, initially limited to the company's business partners and users who first joined the waiting list. The number of users on the waiting list had swelled to more than 1.2 million before Baidu stopped disclosing it. As of Wednesday, reporters learned that it was no longer necessary to enter a Chinese ID number to access the Wen Xin Yiyan robot.
Since OpenAI's ChatGPT became a global hit earlier this year, Chinese companies have announced generative AI projects. Despite this high level of control, China's top leaders have publicly expressed the need to develop domestic technology, specifically mentioning artificial intelligence.
The Interim Rules on the Management of Conversational AI Services came into effect on August 15. As long as the product is not publicly sold, it does not apply to companies developing the AI technology. This is more lenient than the draft released in April, which said it applied to upcoming regulations even at the research stage. The latest version of the regulations also does not include comprehensive licensing requirements, only saying that a license is required if required by laws and regulations, but does not specify which laws and regulations.
China has strengthened personal data protection and cybersecurity supervision. Other Chinese companies, including Alibaba, are also launching a slew of generative AI products. Last week, Kunlun Technology, the parent company of Opera Browser, released an AI chatbot and search engine called Tiangong AI Search to the public. The company compares it to Microsoft's Bing integration with OpenAI because Tiangong also provides internet links. Previously, most of these AI products in the Chinese market were only available for internal use by corporate partners.
It's not clear how the underlying technology of chatbots compares to ChatGPT. The basic functions are usually the same, although Wen Xin Yiyan Robot and Tiangong mainly use Chinese, and both have separate iPhone apps. According to a report by Bank of America, ChatGPT's popularity began to decline after the launch of the iPhone app in May.