Artificial intelligence (AI) has been developing rapidly in China, seamlessly integrating into people's daily life and transforming industries nationwide.
AI's rapid development and wide application took the spotlight at the 2025 China Internet Civilization Conference, where experts gathered in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province, on Tuesday, to discuss how AI empowers industries.
Focused on gathering positive energy online and fostering new trends of the times, the event brought together delegates from central and local authorities, major news portals, as well as heads of online social organizations and internet businesses, scholars, internet celebrities, and students. Delegates to the conference believe that in recent years, generative artificial intelligence represented by large models has grown rapidly, triggering a new round of surge in AI development and application.
"In fact, many netizens may not notice that they have been using AI in their daily life. For instance, over 130 million trips of users use voice recognition in mobile input methods, which has significantly enhanced the efficiency of input. It can be said that AI is being used in various fields such as people's livelihood, education, healthcare, government services, judiciary, and water conservancy, as well as in our industrial research and development, production, sales, services, and management," said Liu Qingfeng, director of National Speech and Language Engineering Laboratory of China.
Industries have undergone significant changes with the in-depth integration of AI.
"For example, we can already provide excellent AI technologies to support the multi-language interaction in the vehicles going global, as overseas expansion of China's automotive industry has drawn so much global attention," said Liu.
"Furthermore, thanks to AI-powered solutions that can leverage multilingual technologies and comprehensive interaction strategies based on large model learning, our vehicle inspections for cars shipped abroad, including checking the smoothness of smart cockpit interactions and identifying potential issues, can now be completed by just two people in three days, while in the past, such work would take four people to complete in 15 days," Liu continued.
By the end of 2023, venture capital funding for AI startups in China had reached 233.35 billion U.S. dollars, according to the White Paper on the Development of Artificial Intelligence in 2024 .
Experts said that AI will continue to experience rapid growth for the foreseeable future.
"We can see that governments at all levels across the country are increasing their investments in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, more and more enterprises are also ramping up funding in AI. In the coming years, AI will definitely accelerate its development, with deeper and broader applications across industries," said Duan Pingxia, executive director of the China Cybersecurity Industry Alliance.
China's rapidly-developing AI changes daily life, industries
