GENEVA, July 3 (Reuters) - China is far ahead of other

countries in generative AI inventions like chatbots, filing six

times more patents than its closest rival the United States,

U.N. data showed on Wednesday.

Generative AI, which produces text, images, computer code

and even music from existing information, is exploding with more

than 50,000 patent applications filed in the past decade,

according to the World Intellectual Property Organization

(WIPO), which oversees a system for countries to share

recognition of patents.

A quarter of them were filed in 2023 alone, it said.

"This is a booming area this is an area that is growing at

increasing speed. And it's somewhere that we expect to grow even

more," Christopher Harrison, WIPO Patent Analytics Manager, told

reporters.

More than 38,000 GenAI inventions were filed by China

between 2014-2023 versus 6,276 filed by the United States over

the same period, WIPO said.

Harrison said the Chinese patent applications covered a

broad area of sectors from autonomous driving to publishing to

document management.

South Korea, Japan and India were ranked third, fourth and

fifth respectively, with India growing at the fastest rate, the

data showed.

Among the top applicants were China's ByteDance - which owns

video app TikTok - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group ( BABA ), and

Microsoft ( MSFT ), a backer of startup OpenAI which created ChatGPT.

While chatbots with the ability to mimic human discourse are

already being widely used by retailers and others to improve

customer service, GenAI has the potential to transform many

other economic sectors like science, publishing, transportation

or security, WIPO's Harrison said.

"The patent data suggests this is an area that is going to

have a profound impact across many different industrial sectors

going forward," said WIPO's Harrison, highlighting the

scientific sector where GenAI-created molecules have the

potential to expedite drug development.

WIPO said it expects a further wave of patents to be filed

soon and plans to release a future update of the data, possibly

using GenAI to illustrate the trend.