Chinese generative AI patents top US 6-to-1 in last decade, UN data finds
- China filed more than 38,000 patents related to GenAI from 2014 to 2023 compared with more than 6,000 from the US, according to the UN’s IP agency
China’s 38,210 patent filings in the category make up about 70 per cent of the 54,000 filed in the past 10 years, according to data published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The US ranked second with 6,276 patent filings.
They are followed by South Korea, Japan and India, which had the highest average annual growth rate in patent filings at 56 per cent.
After Microsoft-backed OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in late 2022, there was an explosion of GenAI patents, with more than 25 per cent of such patents being filed in 2023 alone.
The growth of GenAI models in China coincided with global patent expansion in this area. Chinese companies have introduced more than 200 large language models to the market, a result of the ChatGPT-frenzy that prompted a bevy of local Big Tech firms and AI start-ups to seek their own answer to the viral US chatbot.