China’s Baidu Makes AI Chatbot Ernie Bot Publicly Available

(HONG KONG) — On Thursday, Baidu, a Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence startup, made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model completely available to the public, increasing the company’s stock price by more than 3%.

Beijing sees artificial intelligence as a crucial field to compete with the United States to become a global leader by 2030. After U.S. firm OpenAI launched the hugely popular ChatGPT, Chinese technology firms have raced to announce their generative AI models, in which algorithms allow the technology to develop and create new content.

Baidu announced on Thursday that Ernie Bot, which generates text and images in response to inquiries and instructions from users, was now available to the general public via the official website and an app available only in China’s app stores. By Thursday afternoon, the Ernie Bot app had topped the charts for free apps on Apple’s iOS store in China.

According to Baidu CEO Robin Li, by making the model public, Baidu will receive significant real-world human feedback, which will assist in enhancing Ernie and Baidu’s foundation models.

China, like Europe, has undertaken recent measures to control the generative AI business.

Baidu, a Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence startup, made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model completely available to the public.

China introduced AI legislation on August 15, forcing enterprises to do a security study and acquire permissions before releasing their product to the public. According to Beijing, companies that provide such generative AI services must also cooperate with government requests for technology and data.

The United States currently lacks regulations.

Earlier this month, Baidu CEO Li expressed optimism and termed the AI legislation as “more pro-innovation than regulation” during the company’s earnings call.

On Thursday, Baichuan and Zhipu AI, two additional Chinese AI businesses, also launched AI language models.

SOURCE – (AP)