China leading generative AI patents race, UN report says

China is far ahead of other countries in generative AI inventions like chatbots, filing six times more patents than its closest rival the United States, U.N. data showed on Wednesday.
Generative AI is exploding with more than 50,000 patent applications filed in the past decade, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, which oversees a system for countries to share recognition of patents.
A quarter of them were filed in 2023 alone, it said.
“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, told reporters.
More than 38,000 GenAI inventions were filed by China between 2014-2023 versus 6,276 filed by the United States over the same period, WIPO said.
Harrison said the Chinese patent applications covered a broad area of sectors from autonomous driving to publishing to document management.