Xi Proposes China-Led Open-Source AI Development Community

At the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Chinese president Xi Jinping proposed creating a China-led community to develop open-source artificial intelligence models, Bloomberg reported. Xi said the initiative would support BRICS members' collaboration on the development and use of large language models and would include training courses and AI seminars.

One day earlier, Xi invited BRICS countries to join a global AI cooperation organisation that China established in July. According to the Chinese government, 29 countries signed the agreement to found the body on July 16 and its headquarters are in Shanghai. Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Brazil are among the signatories. The government statement noted that no European Union member state is part of the organisation.

Regulatory contrast with the European Union

Europe has taken a different route for open-source models under the European Union's AI Act. The law removes some obligations for providers of general-purpose AI models that are free and open-source, and European Commission guidelines set conditions for that relief. Those guidelines say providers may be exempt from requirements such as producing technical documentation for regulators, supplying that documentation to downstream users and appointing a representative in the EU if certain conditions are met. To qualify, the model's weights, parameters and architecture must be public and the licence must allow use and modification without a commercial-purpose restriction.

By contrast, China has not formally defined the same boundaries for open-source AI models. At a China AI conference in July, Xi emphasised the need to balance development with security. In a separate development, the minister of state security published an article on Saturday that, without naming any country, accused some governments of attempting to sever AI industrial chains and global supply chains through blacklists and closed ecosystems.

Chinese authorities continue to consider how best to regulate access to some of the country's most powerful AI models.