China is far ahead of other countries in generative AI inventions like chatbots, filing six times more patents than its closest rival the US, United Nations data showed on Wednesday.

Generative AI, which produces text, images, computer code and even music from existing information, is exploding with more than 50 000 patent applications filed in the past decade, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo), 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 gen AI inventions were filed by China between 2014 and 2023 versus 6 276 filed by the US 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.

South Korea, Japan and India were ranked third, fourth and fifth respectively, with India growing at the fastest rate, the data showed.

Among the top applicants were China’s ByteDance, which owns video app TikTok, as well as Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and Microsoft, a backer of start-up OpenAI, which created ChatGPT.

‘Profound impact’

While chatbots with the ability to mimic human discourse are already being widely used by retailers and others to improve customer service, gen AI has the potential to transform many other economic sectors like science, publishing, transportation or security, Wipo’s Harrison said.

“The patent data suggests this is an area that is going to have a profound impact across many different industrial sectors going forward,” said Harrison, highlighting the scientific sector where gen AI-created molecules have the potential to expedite drug development.