The World Intellectual Property Organization has counted the patents and scientific publications related to generative AI it could find between 2014 and 2023, and found 54,000 GenAI-related inventions and over 75,000 scientific publications – and that China utterly dominates the field., delivered on Wednesday, found 733 patent families – sets of patents related to a single invention and with the same technical content – on GenAI in 2014 ballooning to more than 14,000 in 2023.
China accounted for 38,210 inventions, while the US contributed a comparatively paltry 6,276. Chinese orgs also dominated the top ten entities that filed patents. Here's that list:In terms of patents granted, Tencent again topped the chart – ahead of Ping An Insurance, Baidu, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and IBM.
Almost 18,000 GenAI patents pertained to images or video, followed by work on tech related to text, and a category WIPO termed"speech/voice/music." Just 239 patent families address"software/code" issues, making it the seventh-most common topic for GenAI patents. WIPO also noted"very high growth rates in both smaller application areas such as agriculture and energy management and large fields such as life sciences, security and physical sciences/engineering." The org has also observed stagnating interest in GenAI as applied to telecommunications, military, arts and humanities, and a category it describes as"industrial property/law/social and behavioral sciences.