An early proponent of Chinese large language models (LLM), Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co. (Zhipu AI) stated that it is creating Sora-like technology as a means of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), highlighting a national aspiration to overtake US advancements.
Later this year, the public will be able to access OpenAI’s text-to-video generator, Sora. This has caused numerous Chinese companies, where Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT is not readily available, to step up their efforts to keep up with recent advancements in the US in this area.
According to Zhang Peng, the CEO of Beijing-based Zhipu AI, “we’re not surprised about the advent of Sora, and we’re also working on [similar technology],” as reported this week by the local media outlet TMTPost.
Noting that Sora’s multi-modal capabilities are “very state-of-the-art,” Zhang praised the project but also pointed out that Sora and related Chinese efforts are currently behind in terms of technology.
Zhang was reported in the report as saying, “Sora has experienced progressive enhancement, there’s still a gap between [it] and us and we need to keep working hard.”
Being the company behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other similar services, Zhipu was one of the first in China to investigate the development of LLMs. One year before OpenAI released its GPT-3 LLM series, it was founded in June 2019 by a group of Tsinghua University computer science research fellows.
Based on research conducted by Tsinghua University’s Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG), the company was founded. Zhang was a key member of the KEG team and holds a doctorate from the university’s computer science department.
Zhipu declared in October that it had raised $342 million, or 2.5 billion yuan, in total. Numerous Big Tech companies and venture capital (VC) firms in China have supported it, including Alibaba Group Holding, the company that owns the Post, Tencent Holdings, Meituan, and Xiaomi.
The venture capital arm of Hillhouse Capital, GL Ventures, and HongShan, formerly Sequoia China, are among the backers.
ChatGLM, Zhipu’s response to ChatGPT, was unveiled in March of last year. It was one of the first sets of generative AI services authorized for general release by the Chinese government.
Beijing has placed restrictions on the use of foreign chatbots and required all local services to obtain a permit before going live in order to keep generative AI services under control.
Several of the top AI start-ups in the world, such as OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Mistral AI in Europe, have not yet released their products on the mainland.
As per the TMTPost report, Zhang remains optimistic about collaborating with foreign companies on AI technologies in the future and is considering international markets.
“Globalization is a crucial business strategy. Going outside [of China] would be a very significant milestone for as a Chinese company, Zhang added.