FILE - Director General the World Intellectual Property Organization Daren Tang speaks during a press conference at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization , in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. China has far and away requested the most patents in the world when it comes to generative AI, the U.N. intellectual property agency said Wednesday, July 3, 2024, trailed by the United States in distant second.
The new report on patents, the first of its kind, aims to track patent applications as a possible indication of trends in artificial intelligence. It focuses only on generative AI and excludes artificial intelligence more broadly, which includes technologies like facial recognition or computer vision.
Some critics fear that GenAI could replace workers in some types of jobs or improperly take human-generated content without fair or adequate compensation to the people behind it.