China’s tech giants, including Baidu, Alibaba, and NetEase, are racing to match the West’s recent developments in artificial intelligence, touting projects that they hope will achieve the same buzz created by the release of ChatGPT.

After months of announcing cost cuts and headcount reductions, big groups are now optimistically presenting investment plans to rival OpenAI’s chatbot, while trademark trolls are lining up to claim words related to ChatGPT’s achievements.

Zhou Hongyi, head of Internet security company Qihoo 360, characterized ChatGPT, a program that produces realistic text answers to questions posed by humans, as the start of the artificial intelligence revolution. “It has shortcomings but also unlimited potential,” he said in a talk-show discussion last week.