OpenAI reportedly plans to block access in China. Chinese artificial intelligence companies may fill this gap.

OpenAI reportedly plans to block API access from China, and Chinese companies are quickly stepping in to fill the looming void.

According to Chinese state-owned newspaper Securities Times (Reuters), Chinese users received an email saying they were in a “region that OpenAI does not currently support” and that additional measures would be taken to block API traffic from certain regions. Starts July 9th.

ChatGPT is not available in mainland China, but users have solved this problem by using the OpenAI API. According to the Securities Times, many Chinese startups have built applications using APIs.

According to reports, it is unclear what prompted OpenAI to start restricting API access. But the company recently investigated and shut down five “covert influence operations.” One of them is a Chinese network called “Spamouflage,” which reportedly uses OpenAI models to research and generate social media posts targeting critics of the Chinese government. The Biden administration has determined that generative AI models pose cybersecurity risks and mandated security testing and evaluation of underlying models in an AI executive order.

As a result of OpenAI’s apparent move, Chinese companies with their own artificial intelligence models have announced incentives to attract OpenAI users to their platforms. According to Reuters, Baidu is offering additional tokens for free migration to its Ernie chatbot for its flagship model Ernie 3.5. Similarly, Alibaba Cloud offers free tokens and migration services for its Qwen-plus model, while Zhipu Artificial Intelligence has launched a “special migration plan” for OpenAI API users, claiming that its GLM model meets the same benchmarks as the OpenAI model.