Chinese tech industry experts say the rapidly increasing use of AI tokens is giving rise to a token-based economy, with the tiny units underpinning artificial intelligence services evolving beyond a technical metric and into the basis for delivering and pricing AI services.
Tokens are the fundamental units that AI models use to process and generate information. They are also the building blocks that underpin tasks ranging from chatbot conversations to image and film-quality video production.
Yin said tokens were more than just a technical metric, and had become a new production factor that connected AI model capability, computing resources and commercial value.
AI token usage has risen rapidly in China, with daily AI token consumption surging more than 1,000-fold in just over two years, rising from around 100 billion tokens a day at the start of 2024 to 100 trillion by the end of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Daily usage exceeded 140 trillion tokens in March, equivalent to roughly 100,000 tokens per person based on the country’s population of about 1.4 billion.
The surge in AI token usage comes as companies across the country increasingly adopt AI to boost productivity and automate business operations.