Chinese firms look to pounce on AI gap after OpenAI blocks access

The rising tensions between Washington and Beijing have proved to be a boon for the AI sector in China, with OpenAI now blocking Chinese users from accessing its tools.

At the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model, SenseNova 5.5, which it claims to rival OpenAI's GPT-4o, according to The Guardian.

SenseTime is one of the many AI firms in the country looking to gain from the departure of OpenAI, which is largely considered as the world leader in artificial intelligence tech, with ChatGPT being its premier sevice..

Even though ChatGPT was blocked by the Xi Jingping government, users could still access it through a VPN. That access was recently cut-off from OpenAI's side, according to Bloomberg.

A spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg, "We are taking additional steps to block API traffic from regions where we do not support access to OpenAI’s services.”

OpenAI did not elaborate on why these steps were being taken, though the poor relationship between the US and China could be pointed as a strong reason.

The Guardian reported that the US restricted the export of certain advanced semiconductors to China, that are vital for training the most cutting-edge AI technology, putting pressure on other parts of the AI industry.

The consequences of this move could be such that OpenAI may soon see a Chinese equal pop-up at the top and fight for market share soon, just like what happened in the case of Tesla and BYD for electric vehicles. Chinese firms are already their making moves to reach there.

In an attempt to lure domestic developers away from OpenAI, Chinese firms are offering tempting propositions to them, such as SenseTime giving away 50m free tokens – digital credits for using the AI – and saying that it will deploy staff to help new clients migrate from OpenAI services to SenseTime’s products for free.

Last month, the AI firm Baidu offered 50m free tokens for its Ernie 3.5 AI model, as well as free migration services, while Zhipu AI, another local company, offered 150m free tokens for its model. Tencent Cloud is giving away 100m free tokens for its AI model to new users until the end of July, according to The Guardian.

Each technological/industrial sectors that US pulls out off from China, seems to bloom quickly through local innovation. A similar trend might be awaiting the future of Chinese AI industry.