A Chinese ChatGPT alternative won’t pop up overnight—even though many companies may want you to think so.
Every once in a while, there’s one thing that gets everybody obsessed. In the Chinese tech world last week, it was ChatGPT.
Maybe it was because of the holiday season, or maybe it was because ChatGPT is not currently available in China, but it took more than two months for the natural-language-processing chatbot to finally blow up in the country. (OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, told Reuters it wasn’t operating in China because “conditions in certain countries make it difficult or impossible for us to do so in a way that is consistent with our mission.”)
But in the span of the past week, a massive competition has developed, with almost every major Chinese tech company announcing plans to introduce their own ChatGPT-like products (even some that have never been known for artificial intelligence capabilities), while the Chinese public has been frantically trying out the service.
Most people who’ve experienced ChatGPT firsthand in China have accessed it through VPNs or paid workarounds—for example, clever entrepreneurs have essentially rented out OpenAI accounts or asked ChatGPT questions on buyers’ behalf, at the price of a few bucks per 20 questions. But even more people are seeing the results through screenshots and short social videos showing ChatGPT’s answers, both of which have swept Chinese social media this week.
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