PALO ALTO, U.S./HONG KONG -- The race between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has entered its next stage: commercialization.

Over the past decade, China's AI development has surpassed that of the U.S. by many measures, including in fundamental research . But the arrival of ChatGPT -- the essay-writing, exam-passing chatbot developed by American startup OpenAI -- has left Chinese players scrambling to catch up.