'US Blacklist' SenseTime from China Unveils 'SenseChat', a Rival to ChatGPT

SenseTime (商湯科技), China's largest artificial intelligence (AI) startup, unveiled its AI chatbot 'SenseChat' on the 10th. SenseTime co-founder Xu Li revealed that 'SenseChat' is based on the company's massive AI model 'SenseNova.'

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to major foreign media on the 10th, SenseChat demonstrated composing emails and fairy tales as guided by users.

Founded in 2014 by Tang Xiao'ou and others from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), SenseTime is a company listed on the U.S. blacklist. It possesses AI-related technologies in various fields such as facial recognition, video analysis, and autonomous driving, and is particularly recognized for having world-class technology in facial recognition.

The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on SenseTime, citing that it provides technologies such as facial recognition that assist in the oppression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. In October 2019, during Donald Trump's presidency, the U.S. government imposed sanctions that, in principle, prohibit American companies from doing business with SenseTime. Subsequently, in December 2021, the U.S. Department of the Treasury added SenseTime to the investment restriction blacklist.

After the U.S. company OpenAI released 'ChatGPT,' the Chinese information technology (IT) industry has also been focusing on developing AI chatbots. On the 16th of last month, Baidu, China's largest search engine, unveiled its AI chatbot 'Ernie Bot.' However, it used pre-prepared videos without a live demonstration and held a second demonstration event for companies privately on the 27th. Then, on the 7th, Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, partially released its AI chatbot 'Tongyi Qianwen' to select corporate clients on a limited basis.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.