China has reportedly immortalized President Xi Jinping and his values in the form of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot.
According to the Financial Times, the chatbot has been trained on President Xi’s thoughts and beliefs, while citizens are blocked from using US rivals like ChatGPT.
It is the country’s newest large language model, and Beijing is vying with the White House for AI market dominance.
The chatbot, cleverly dubbed ‘Chat Xi PT’, has been fed literature provided by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) regulatory body, the Financial Times reported, citing a person involved in the project.
The CAC has spearheaded the country’s rule-setting regarding the use of generative AI and its capabilities.
The watchdog stipulates that generative AI bots, like those created by Chinese firms Alibaba and Baidu, “embody core socialist values” and cannot “contain any content that subverts state power”.
For example, both Alibaba and Baidu’s chatbots typically ask users to restart the conversation when pressed about sensitive topics.
China’s strict rules mean that homegrown large language models cannot be trained on English-based data sets.
Otherwise, their chatbots may pick up on values that are deemed too Western.
According to the FT’s report, the new model has been trained on a data set that draws heavily from government regulations, policy, and state media reports.
President Xi is mentioned an eyewatering 86,314 times in these documents.
A line in one of the documents says chatbots must “ensure that in thought, politics, and action, we are always in high alignment with the Party Central Committee with General Secretary Xi Jinping at its core.”
Another says: “Let us unite more closely around the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.”
It can answer questions like President Xi’s, create reports, summarise information, and translate between Chinese and English.
So-called ‘Chat Xi PT’ is currently only being used at a research center under the powerful internet regulator.
However, it may be released to the public in future.
