In China, where the tech community has always watched progress in the West closely, entrepreneurs, researchers, and investors are looking for ways to make their dent in the generative AI space. Tech firms are devising tools built on open source models to attract consumer and enterprise customers. Individuals are cashing in on AI-generated content. Regulators have responded quickly to define how text, image, and video synthesis should be used. Meanwhile, U.S. tech sanctions are raising concerns about China’s ability to keep up with AI advancement.

As generative AI takes the world by storm towards the end of 2022, let’s take a look at how this explosive technology is shaking out in China.

Thanks to viral art creation platforms like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2, generative AI is suddenly on everyone’s lips. Halfway across the world, Chinese tech giants have also captivated the public with their equivalent products, adding a twist to suit the country’s tastes and political climate.

Stable Diffusion

ERNIE-ViLG

The quick test reflects the difficulty in capturing cultural nuances when the data sets used are inherently biased — assuming Stable Diffusion would have more data on the Chinese diaspora and ERNIE-ViLG probably is trained on a greater variety of shumai images that are rarer outside China.

Of course also clearly not having the model adjusted properly for darker-skinned folks, sigh

Unlike Baidu and other profit-driven tech firms, IDEA is one of a handful of institutions backed by local governments in recent years to work on cutting-edge technologies. That means the center probably enjoys more research freedom without the pressure to drive commercial success. Based in the tech hub of Shenzhen and supported by one of China’s wealthiest cities, it’s an up-and-coming outfit worth watching.

What’s more significant to the future of the fledgling field is the new set of regulatory measures targeting what the government dubs “deep synthesis tech”, which denotes “technology that uses deep learning, virtual reality, and other synthesis algorithms to generate text, images, audio, video, and virtual scenes.”As with other types of internet services in China, from games to social media, users are asked to verify their names before using generative AI apps. The fact that prompts can be traced to one’s real identity inevitably has a restrictive impact on user behavior.

But there’s no consensus as to how the fast-changing field should be governed, yet. “I think it’s an area we’re all learning together,” Shoham admitted. “It has to be a collaborative effort. It has to involve technologists who actually understand the technology and what it does and what it doesn’t do, the public sector, social scientists, and people who are impacted by the technology as well as the government, including the sort of commercial and legal aspect of the regulation.”

Competition in China’s SaaS space is also dog-eat-dog. “In the U.S., you can do fairly well by building product-led software, which doesn’t rely on human services to acquire or retain users. But in China, even if you have a great product, your rival could steal your source code overnight and hire dozens of customer support staff, which don’t cost that much, to outrace you,” said a founder of a Chinese generative AI startup, requesting anonymity.

Time will tell if Kunlun and other indigenous AI chips will give China an edge in the generative AI race.

How China is building a parallel generative AI universe by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

source