China's AI industry has gained international attention this year after DeepSeek released a new version of its AI chatbot in January, sending shockwaves across global markets.

DeepSeek wowed industry insiders with its apparent ability to rival or even surpass the capabilities of Western competitors like ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost.

Schools in the capital will offer at least eight hours of AI classes per academic year from the semester starting in early September, state news agency Xinhua said.

Schools can conduct them as standalone courses or integrate them with subjects such as information technology or science.

"Innovative teaching methods will be introduced, utilising AI companions, AI research assistants, and other intelligent agents to facilitate human-computer dialogue learning," said a statement from the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, dated last week.

Beijing also plans to explore more opportunities for collaboration between universities and secondary schools to cultivate AI talent, it said.

This includes developing a series of "advanced AI education courses focused on the early development of outstanding innovative talents".

Last month, President Xi Jinping held rare talks with Chinese tech tycoons, boosting optimism that this signalled more support for the sector.

Xi has strengthened the role of state enterprises in the world's second-largest economy and cracked down on "disorderly" expansion in several industries.

DeepSeek was praised by authorities, with its founder also present at the high-level business symposium.

The spotlight is now on new Chinese AI assistants, with hopes that they could rival DeepSeek.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba last week unveiled an artificial intelligence model called QwQ-32B, which it says has "comparable performance" to DeepSeek while also requiring far less data to run.

In addition, the powerful new AI agent Manus is making waves in the country, with abilities generally considered more advanced than a chatbot.