China home to over one-third of world's AI large language models

BEIJING, July 2 (Xinhua) -- With booming artificial intelligence (AI) industry development, China is now home to more than one-third of the world's AI large language models, said a whitepaper released Tuesday in Beijing.

The number of AI large language models worldwide has reached 1,328, with 36 percent from China, the second-largest proportion only after the United States.

The statistics are from a whitepaper on the global digital economy released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology at the Global Digital Economy Conference 2024 that opened on Tuesday.

Among nearly 30,000 AI enterprises worldwide by the first quarter of this year, the United States had 34 percent and China had 15 percent, the whitepaper said.

Xu Xinchao, deputy secretary general of the Beijing municipal government, said the development of generative AI represented by large language models is empowering the smart transformation of various industries.

The combined digital economy of the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and the Republic of Korea exceeded 33 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023, up by more than 8 percent year on year, the whitepaper said.

By the end of May, China had built over 3.83 million 5G base stations, accounting for over 60 percent of the global total, Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, told the conference.