China has surged ahead in the global race for generative AI patents, according to a recent UN report, despite U.S. sanctions.

What Happened: China has taken a commanding lead in the field of generative AI, surpassing the United States by a significant margin, as per a UN report published on Wednesday.

Generative AI, which encompasses the creation of text, images, computer code, and music from existing data, has seen an explosion of patents, with over 50,000 applications submitted in the past decade.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) revealed that China filed over 38,000 GenAI patents between 2014 and 2023, a figure six times higher than the 6,276 patents filed by the United States during the same period.

The report also highlighted the broad spectrum of sectors covered by Chinese patent applications, including autonomous driving, publishing, and document management.

Among the top applicants were China’s ByteDance, the owner of the video app TikTok; Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group; and Microsoft Corp., a backer of OpenAI, the startup that created ChatGPT.

“This is a booming area this is an area that is growing at increasing speed. And it’s somewhere that we expect to grow even more,” Christopher Harrison, WIPO Patent Analytics Manager said, as per a Reuters report.

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Why It Matters: Despite the U.S. imposing sanctions on the export of high-end chips, China’s AI sector has continued to thrive. In April, it was reported that Chinese entities had managed to acquire high-end NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) chips despite the U.S. ban, through third-party vendors.

These chips were integrated into servers manufactured by Super Micro Computer Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., and Gigabyte Technology Co Ltd.

China’s AI ambitions were further highlighted in January when the country announced its intention to become a global leader in AI infrastructure by 2027. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s policy document outlined key technologies and facilities necessary for a technologically advanced future economy, setting the stage for China to achieve global AI leadership.

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Image Generated With AI Via MidJourney

This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote