China is closing the AI gap with the US

Chinese firms unveil tech that rivals leading US systems and are more willing to share it

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July, start-up founder Qu Dongqi showed off a video he had recently posted online. It displayed an old photograph of a woman with two toddlers. Then the photo sprang to life as the woman lifted the toddlers up in her arms, and they laughed with surprise.

The video was created by AI technology from Chinese internet company Kuaishou. The technology was reminiscent of a video generator, called Sora, that American start-up OpenAI unveiled in 2024. But unlike Sora, it was available to the general public.

"My American friends still can't use Sora," Mr Qu said. "But we already have better solutions here."

While the United States has had a head start on AI development, China is catching up. In recent weeks, several Chinese companies have unveiled AI technologies that rival leading American systems. And these technologies are already in the hands of consumers, businesses and independent software developers across the globe.

While many American companies are worried that AI technologies could accelerate the spread of disinformation or cause other serious harm, Chinese companies are more willing to release their technologies to consumers or even share the underlying software code with other businesses and software developers. This kind of sharing of computer code, called open source, allows others to more quickly build and distribute their own products using the same technologies.

Open source has been a cornerstone of the development of computer software, the internet and, now, artificial intelligence. The idea is that technology advances faster when its computer code is freely available for anyone to examine, use and improve upon.