Chinese humanoid startup challenges OpenAI over model similarities

JoyIn, a humanoid robotics startup backed by Ant, has accused OpenAI of copying ideas and design elements from its recent AI and robotics work. CEO Guo Renjie said the company had already presented parts of its model framework before OpenAI published related material earlier this month. In a public letter posted in Chinese, Guo pointed to similarities in technical concepts such as recursive selfimprovement and in the look of the companies’ web pages. He also said JoyIn has begun preparing a lawsuit, though CNBC said it could not verify the claims independently. The dispute comes as U.S. and Chinese companies compete more aggressively in AI and humanoid robotics. JoyIn says its Aether model uses a perceptionbased approach to robot control and can help humanoids complete tasks with a 90% firstattempt success rate, while OpenAI had not responded to the allegations at the time of reporting.