China has blocked OpenAI’s ChatGPT over fears that the US company is using artificial intelligence to spread propaganda. reported Nikkie Asia.

Tencent Holdings and Ant Group, the fintech subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding, have been instructed not to offer access to ChatGPT services on their platforms, either directly or through third parties, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Tech companies will also need to inform regulators before launching their own services similar to ChatGPT, the sources add.

ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI, is not officially available in China, but some internet users have been able to access it through a virtual private network (VPN). Dozens of “mini-programs” have also been launched by third-party developers on Tencent’s WeChat social media app claiming to offer ChatGPT services.

This is not the first time China has blocked foreign websites or apps. Beijing has banned dozens of prominent US websites and apps, and between 2009 and 2010 it blocked Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Between 2018 and 2019, he banned Reddit and Wikipedia.

What is the OpenAI ChatGPT chatbot and what is it for?

OpenAI claims that its ChatGPT model, trained with a machine learning technique called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), can simulate dialogues, answer follow-up questions, admit errors, challenge incorrect assumptions, and reject inappropriate requests.

The first development involved human AI trainers who provided the model with conversations where they played both sides: the user and an AI assistant. The version of the bot available for public testing tries to understand user questions and responds with detailed answers that resemble human-written text in a conversational format.

A tool like ChatGPT can be used in real-world applications such as digital marketing, online content creation, answering customer service questions, or, as some users have discovered, even to help debug code . The bot can answer a wide variety of questions and mimic human speech styles.