(Yicai) Sept. 4 -- China’s Alibaba Group Holding has now joined technology giants such as Google and Tencent Holdings in resorting to legal action to reclaim “.ai” domain names tied to their brands and products, as the addresses become increasingly valuable intellectual property and brand assets amid the global boom in artificial intelligence.

The Czech Arbitration Court has mainly ruled in favour of Alibaba in domain name disputes the Hangzhou-based company filed this year, ordering alibaba.ai, qwenchat.ai, taobao.ai, and tmall.ai to be transferred to Alibaba-related entities. Its complaint over 1688.ai was rejected, however, because the holder submitted AI development materials created shortly after registration and a pre-dispute webpage titled “The Way to AGI,” among other evidence.

Google and Tencent have also pursued domain-related disputes in recent years. As businesses expand their .ai domain portfolios, they are increasingly finding that names corresponding to existing or planned products have already been registered by third parties, making domain recovery a growing legal and brand-protection issue.

The rapid emergence of AI products over the past two years has exposed a problem for companies that failed to secure corresponding domain names early on, Wei Bin, a lawyer at Beijing-based Longan Law Firm, told Yicai. As a result, disputes over .ai and "model name + AI" domains have significantly increased, Wei noted.

A key issue in such disputes is whether the original registration was legitimate, Wei pointed out. If holders can prove they registered the domain based on generic words, a meaningful numerical combination, or independent projects, and have genuine development materials, then even if they later offer it for sale publicly, this does not automatically constitute bad faith, Wei said.

Conversely, contacting a company immediately after registration to solicit a high-priced sale, or registering a domain that precisely matches a newly launched product, can provide evidence supporting a finding of cybersquatting, Wei stressed.

Soaring Domain Prices

Originally assigned to Anguilla as its country-code top-level domain, ".ai" has taken on a new meaning with the emergence of AI, evolving from a geographic identifier for the Caribbean nation into a globally recognized marker for AI-related businesses. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, .ai registrations stood at 144,000 when ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, but the figure exceeded one million early this January.

In 2023, the government of Anguilla earned tens of millions of US dollars in revenue from .ai domains.

Registering a .ai domain is still not too expensive, with 12 months costing USD75 on Tencent Cloud's website. In comparison, a .com domain, labeled on the site as "the world's most popular domain," costs just USD12.99 per year.

Some special AI domains have generated considerable commercial value. Wisdom.ai sold for USD750,000 last year, while Bot.ai sold for USD1.2 million through the Sedo trading platform this year, according to statistics from domain trading tracker DNJournal.

Branding Tool

Once-overlooked .ai domains have entered the scope of tech giants' brand protection amid further AI development and the accelerating global expansion of relevant businesses.

.ai domains are evolving from simple web addresses into branding tools for AI products, Wei said, noting that they not only help with user access, product promotion, and global brand recognition, but also help prevent counterfeiting, phishing, and traffic confusion.

Unlike the e-commerce industry, which previously needed substantial time to cultivate markets and build logistics infrastructure, the global rollout of AI products is accelerating, with many launching overseas soon after domestic debuts. At the same time, disputes over domains such as taobao.ai suggest that companies are securing digital assets not only for existing AI products but also for the potential AI transformation and international expansion of established businesses.

From this perspective, the competition for .ai domains is about more than speculation in digital real estate. It reflects the accelerating globalization of AI products and highlights a new challenge for those companies going global.

Editor: Martin Kadiev