China’s tech giants are facing significant hurdles in their race to develop and dominate the artificial intelligence (AI) market, with censorship and a US clampdown on chip imports impeding progress.

Last week, Baidu, one of China’s leading search engines, unveiled its chatbot, Ernie Bot, but the demonstration fell short of expectations, leaving the firm’s shares down by 10%. The company’s AI ambitions have been hampered by censorship, which requires Baidu to limit the scope of its chatbot’s capabilities to avoid politically and factually incorrect answers.

Source: digitalhungary

This comes as Chinese tech firms including Alibaba, JD.com, Netease, and Bytedance’s TikTok are rushing to develop AI services that can replicate human speech. The competition was sparked by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November, which caused a frenzy in the Chinese market.

However, China’s tech ecosystem faces challenges that could hinder its progress in the AI market. The lack of funding for open-ended research with no clear path to profitability is a key issue, according to Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Meanwhile, the US has imposed a squeeze on chip imports, which could hamper Chinese tech firms’ ability to develop AI technologies. This comes as Google announced the launch of its AI chatbot, Bard, and invited people in the US and the UK to test it, as the company seeks to catch up with OpenAI in the race for AI dominance.

Despite the challenges facing Chinese tech firms, brokerages such as Citigroup have given positive reviews of Ernie Bot, and the firms’ shares rallied the day after the lackluster unveiling. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether Chinese tech giants will be able to keep pace with their international rivals in the rapidly evolving AI market.

RELATED:

(Via)

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR