At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this month, start-up founder Qu Dongqi showcased a video he had recently posted online. The video displayed an old photograph of a woman with two toddlers, which then sprang to life as the woman lifted the toddlers up in her arms, eliciting laughter from them.

This remarkable video was created using A.I. technology from the Chinese internet company Kuaishou. It bore similarities to a video generator called Sora, unveiled by the American start-up OpenAI earlier this year. However, unlike Sora, it was accessible to the general public.

“My American friends still can’t use Sora,” Mr. Qu remarked. “But we already have better solutions here.”

While the United States has had a head start on A.I. development, China is rapidly catching up. Several Chinese companies have recently launched A.I. technologies that rival leading American systems, and these innovations are already available to consumers, businesses, and independent software developers worldwide.

Many American companies express concerns that A.I. technologies could accelerate the spread of disinformation or cause other serious harm. In contrast, Chinese companies are more inclined to release their technologies to consumers and even share the underlying software code with other businesses and developers. This practice, known as open source, enables others to quickly build and distribute their own products using the same technologies.