ChatGPT’s rise has China scrambling to catch up in an A.I. arms race that will determine global ‘wealth, power, and influence’

Illustration of the evolution of a chat box into a human man. (Credit: Illustration by Nick Little)

“When is the best age for a woman to get married?” 

In a viral post in March on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, one user posed that awkward question to two A.I. chatbots: ChatGPT, the buzzy service developed by OpenAI, and the more recently unveiled Ernie Bot, from Chinese tech giant Baidu.