China Launches AI ChatBot Trained On "Presidents Thought"

Beijing’s latest attempt to control how artificial intelligence informs Chinese internet users has been rolled out as a chatbot trained on the thoughts of President Xi Jinping.

The country’s newest large language model has been learning from its leader’s political philosophy, known as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, as well as other official literature provided by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

“The expertise and authority of the corpus ensures the professionalism of the generated content,” CAC’s magazine said, in a Monday social media post about the new LLM.

The effort to ensure AI understands Xi’s philosophy comes as Chinese officials navigate balancing the country’s draconian controls on free speech with fostering AI development and creating rivals to the likes of Open AI’s ChatGPT.

For now the new model is being used at a research centre under the powerful internet regulator, but eventually, it may be released for wider use, according to a person involved in the project.

The new model can answer questions, create reports, summarise information and translate between Chinese and English, the post said. The creation of the LLM follows extensive efforts by Chinese officials to disseminate Xi’s ideas on politics, economics and culture in a variety of formats.