BEIJING — Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) companies are moving swiftly to attract users of OpenAI's technology, following reports the US firm plans to restrict access in China and other countries to its application programming interface (API), a platform that allows developers of other products to integrate its AI models.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is planning to block access to technology used to build AI products for entities in China and some other countries, Chinese state-owned newspaper Securities Times reported on Tuesday.

ChatGPT is not available in mainland China but many Chinese startups have been able to access OpenAI's API platform and use it to build their own applications, the Securities Times said.

"We are taking additional steps to block API traffic from regions where we do not support access to OpenAI's services," an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters.

Since late Monday, Chinese users of the platform have received emails warning they are in a "region that OpenAI does not currently support" and that additional measures to block API traffic from unsupported regions would be taken starting July 9.

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