The number of international patent filings for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) innovations has surged eightfold in six years, with a significant majority originating from China-based innovators, according to the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In a recent report, WIPO revealed that 54,000 patents were filed for GenAI innovations in the decade leading up to 2023, with 25% of these filed in the last year alone.
Rapid Growth in GenAI Patents
GenAI, which includes technologies that can create text, videos, music, and computer code from simple prompts, is recognized as a transformative technology. Although GenAI patents currently represent only 6% of all AI patents globally, their numbers are increasing rapidly. Since the introduction of deep neural network architecture in 2017, which underpins large language models, the number of GenAI patent filings has increased eightfold.
Global Distribution of GenAI Patents
China leads the way in GenAI patents, with over 38,000 innovations between 2014 and 2023, six times more than the United States, which is in second place with 6,276 patents. South Korea (4,155 patents) and Japan (3,409 patents) follow, with India seeing the highest average annual growth rate in GenAI patents at 56%, having filed 1,350 patents.
Leading Innovators
Most of the top GenAI patent applicants are Chinese companies. Tencent is at the forefront, followed by Ping An Insurance, Baidu, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. IBM is fifth, with Alibaba (China), Samsung Electronics (South Korea), and Alphabet (Google's parent company) also in the top 10. Chinese company ByteDance and Microsoft complete the list.
Types of GenAI Innovations
The majority of GenAI patent filings involve image and video data, with nearly 18,000 inventions over the decade reviewed. Text and speech/music data follow, with nearly 13,500 inventions each. Patents using molecule, gene, and protein-based data are growing rapidly, with nearly 1,500 inventions since 2014 and an average annual growth of 78% over the past five years.
Future Implications
WIPO's report aims to provide insight into upstream activities to predict downstream developments in the coming years. WIPO chief Daren Tang acknowledged concerns about GenAI's potential impact, including job losses, industry disruption, and intellectual property challenges. He emphasized the importance of IP protections to safeguard creative expression and called for arrangements between AI model trainers and content creators to ensure fair compensation and protection of creative works.
More: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-07-china-surge-generative-ai-patents.html
