AI in practice

China's AI boom continues as 40 new models clear regulatory hurdles for public use

Matthias Bastian
A chinese flag and chatbot bubbles.

Midjourney prompted by THE DECODER

In the first six months since China began regulating AI models, the country has approved more than 40 models for public use, with the latest batch of 14 large language models (LLMs) granted last week. The recipients include Xiaomi Corp, 4Paradigm, and 01.AI, Reuters reports. Beijing began requiring tech companies to seek approval for their LLMs for public use in August, underscoring the nation's approach to AI development while maintaining control over the technology. The first batch of AI models approved included Baidu, Alibaba and ByteDance. One of the most interesting questions will be how effective these approval processes are. A recent experiment showed that you can get Chinese LLMs to talk about topics that the CCP probably doesn't want them to talk about.

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