BEIJING (Reuters)

China’s Ministry of Science and Technology today (February 24) said it saw the potential of ChatGPT-like technology and would be pushing for the integration of artificial intelligence into Chinese society and the economy.

“(This technology) has the potential to be applied in many industries and fields,” Chen Jiachang, who heads the ministry’s high-tech department, told a news briefing, praising its natural language processing capabilities.

Minister Wang Zhigang also told the same briefing that, from an ethics standpoint, technologies like ChatGPT should not be limited too much so they can be developed effectively, though he cautioned that all technological achievements have “two sides”.

Their comments come at a time when Chinese tech companies and investors are keeping an eye on how Beijing will regulate ChatGPT-like technology.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI has kept its hit ChatGPT app off-limits to users in China but the app is attracting huge interest in the country, with firms rushing to integrate the technology into their products and launch rival solutions.

Search engine giant Baidu plans to launch in March a Chinese rival to ChatGPT called ErnieBot. CEO Robin Li said on Wednesday that ErnieBot has been trained on billions of daily search engine requests and represents the “state of the art” when it comes to Chinese-language AI chatbots.