China's AI Ambitions: The Race to Catch Up with the US in Generative AI

Commentary: China's AI video rush is a wake-up call for the world

By Catherine Thorbecke, Bloomberg Opinion The Tribune Content Agency Chinese tech companies are racing ahead with artificial intelligence tools that can turn text into short videos. The public release of a handful of AI video generators from big companies and start-ups aims to show how the country is narrowing the gap with the U.S. when it comes to the technology. But they are simultaneously opening a Pandora's Box, allowing anyone to create short clips from almost any prompt they can imagine. I tried some out. They wouldn't give me any videos of Xi Jinping breakdancing, but one did make a clip from my headshot that removed my jacket and shirt when I was testing what these could potentially be used for. While the videos were not always high quality, I was still ultimately left feeling sorry for a generation of girls and young people who are growing up with this technology so easily accessible. In recent weeks, internet giant Kuaishou Technology released its AI video tool Kling; start-up Zhipu AI launched Ying; TikTok parent-company ByteDance Ltd. unveiled Jimeng; and start-up Shengshu AI, with help from Tsinghua University, launched Vidu. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is also reportedly working on its own AI video-generating application. The rush to offer these services to the Chinese public stands in stark contrast to firms in the U.S. OpenAI teased a first look at its video-generating tool, Sora, in February, but has yet to publicly release it. Google's Veo is only available to a handful of select creators and testers via a waitlist at the moment. I couldn't get my hands on Zhipu AI's Ying or ByteDance's Jimeng outside of China. But I spent some time playing around with Kuaishou's and Shengshu's offerings, and the results showed fleeting moments of mind-boggling promise. Still, most of the videos I generated were very brief clips of uncanny content that struggled with human faces, movement, and basic principles of physics. It's still in its infancy, but these clips felt useless, and just more fodder for a hype-over-performance thesis. My favorite creation was a realistic gray-striped tabby cat eating a bowl of ramen in outer space from Kling (my prompt was: "Can you make a realistic video of a gray-striped tabby cat eating ramen in outer space?"), but it added a creepy human hand to help the kitty slurp the noodles with chopsticks. Vidu gave me an incredibly lifelike shot of two lovers in the cinematic style of legendary director Wong Kar-Wai, but it also removed clothing (from the shoulders up) in my own headshot when prompted. (When I asked the Kling tool to remove my jacket and shirt from a photo of myself it did not obey my prompt command). Kuaishou has said that it will use Kling to make a fantasy short film, but it's hard to picture this being anything remotely watchable with the technology as finicky as it was when I used it. A clip I made of a woman breakdancing was nightmarish. An animated video I generated had a beautiful background but an incomprehensible figure flying over it. It also took me roughly five minutes to generate a five-second clip, so imagine how many hours it would take to make a longer video, not including the painstaking post-production and editing. U.S. tech giants' rare restraint in launching these tools is wise (and saves them a lot of computing resources). But it also makes it hard to judge how superior their products actually are compared to Chinese counterparts. From the curated teases we've seen from OpenAI and Google, they seem far more capable of creating realistic video content. This may be in part because of their access to advanced chips and computing equipment. Training AI video models requires immense amounts of visual data and processing power. OpenAI's published research on Sora found that the video quality "improves markedly" as computational resources for training increase. Beijing is currently restricted from access to the top-of-the line equipment from Nvidia Corp. and others. But Chinese tech firms are finding ways to obtain these products via sophisticated gray market routes and racing to produce advanced AI chips themselves. In a matter of five to 10 years, I wonder how much more powerful their AI video services and offshoots will become? Proponents argue AI video generators will democratize creativity, giving anyone with an idea the ability to make their own films. But the opaque training data raises questions around intellectual property rights, and how this could impact the livelihoods of professional creators. There are also very valid fears about bad actors abusing them to create anything from convincing misinformation to deep-fake porn. This technology may not be totally reliable yet, but its public release in China marks a turning point. Meanwhile, sentiment globally is souring against AI-generated content. Some of the initial wow-factors experienced after the release of ChatGPT nearly two years ago have morphed into fatigue, and there are now questions over how this technology will translate into something that makes our lives better. There's also been mounting scrutiny of the sector's environmental footprint, while investors globally are reassessing AI's promises. Companies in the U.S. and China should approach this crossroads strategically, rather than continuing full-steam ahead with the global race for this technology. Chinese firms should take a page from the Americans' playbook and hold back on rushing these tools to the public. And both countries must work on guardrails to protect artificial content from wreaking real-world harms, as well as addressing where the training data is coming from, and who has the rights to use it. It might be too late to put the genie back in the bottle, but the generation that has to come of age under constant threat of being deep-faked and deceived deserves better. _____ This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News. _____

China's AI Video Rush Is a Wake-Up Call for the World

Chinese tech companies are racing ahead with artificial intelligence tools that can turn text into short videos. The public release of a handful of AI video generators from big companies and start-ups aims to show how the country is narrowing the gap with the US when it comes to the technology. But they are simultaneously opening a Pandora's Box, allowing anyone to create short clips from almost any prompt they can imagine. I tried some out. They wouldn't give me any videos of Xi Jinping breakdancing, but one did make a clip from my headshot that removed my jacket and shirt when I was testing what these could potentially be used for. While the videos were not always high quality, I was still ultimately left feeling sorry for a generation of girls and young people who are growing up with this technology so easily accessible.

ET Explained: AI race in focus as ByteDance hits play on AI video creator

ByteDance introduced Jimeng AI, a text-to-video generative app, limited to China. The app, developed by Faceu Technology, allows users to create 80 images or 26 videos for free. Other Chinese companies have also launched their AI models. China has approved over 40 AI models and leads in generative AI patents globally, outpacing the US.TikTok parent ByteDance last week launched a new text-to-video generative AI app called Jimeng AI, said to be a rival to OpenAI's Sora which is yet to be made publicly available. ET takes a close look at Jimeng and other Chinese GenAI models, and their place in the global AI race. What does Jimeng AI do? Jimeng AI was developed by ByteDance-owned Faceu Technology and can generate images or videos from text prompts. It is available on both Android and Apple's App Stores, but only in China. The Chinese word Jimeng translates into "immediate dream". Users can use the app to create 80 images or 26 videos for free. The app has monthly subscriptions starting at 69 yuan or about $10 to generate more videos. Mainland China's AI video-generation market is projected to reach 9.3 billion yuan by 2026, up from 8 million yuan in 2021, according to research firm LeadLeo. OpenAI's Sora remains available only to red teamers to assess critical areas for harms or risks, and visual artists, designers and filmmakers for feedback. Has China produced other prominent GenAI models? China has seen significant domestic competition in the video models arena. Last month, another short-video platform, Kuaishou, launched text-to-video model Kling AI, whose beta version is accessible worldwide for those who register with email. On the heels of this launch, AI startup Zhipu introduced its text and image-to-video model Ying. The startup also has a chatbot called ChatGLM. Similarly, Tsinghua University and AI startup ShengShu Technology created Vidu AI, which can turn images and text into videos. Chinese AI unicorn 0.1 AI, founded by former president of Google China Kai-Fu Lee, launched an open-source model, Yi-34B. The company hopes to be China's answer to OpenAI. China's large firms are also in the fray. Baidu last year launched ChatGPT competitor Ernie Bot. Tencent's foundation model is called Hunyuan, while Alibaba's family of large language models is known as Tongyi Qianwen. Where does China stand in the global AI race? Chinese regulators have approved more than 40 AI models for public use -- none of these is foreign. China's homegrown models are emerging in the backdrop of OpenAI blocking access to its products in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, while the US continues its export controls preventing China from accessing critical components for advanced AI development. A recent report by the UN arm World Intellectual Property Organization showed that China filed more than 38,000 generative AI patents in the last 10 years, more than all other countries combined. The US comes in second with 6,276 over the same period. The Cyberspace Administration of China is also reviewing AI models in the country to ensure that their responses on sensitive topics align with socialist values.