Baidu’s Ernie Bot to give tough time to ChatGPT

Abida Shaheen

Islamabad: China’s tech giant Baidu on Thursday afternoon introduced its own Artificial Intelligence (AI) creation to give tough time to ChatGPT, to keep up in the global AI race.

This move follows the green light from the Chinese government as the country pushes forward with AI technology. Baidu, which is known for its online search services, announced the launch of its AI chatbot named Ernie Bot, which works much like ChatGPT.

This chatbot will be accessible to everyone, marking a significant step. Alongside Baidu, two other AI startups, Baichuan Intelligent Technology and Zhipu AI, are also introducing their chatbots on the same day.

ERNIE Bot is the first domestic AI app to be fully available to the public in China. It is not available outside the country. “We are thrilled to share that ERNIE Bot is now fully open to the general public starting August 31,” Baidu said in a statement.

“In addition to ERNIE Bot, Baidu is set to launch a suite of new AI-native apps that allow users to fully experience the four core abilities of generative AI: understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory.” The chatbot was released in March but its availability was limited. By making it widely available, Baidu will be able
to gain “massive” human feedback to improve the app at a swift pace, CEO Robin Li was quoted as saying in the statement.

Generative AI apps including chatbots such as ERNIE are trained on vast amounts of data as well as their interactions with users so they can answer questions, including complex ones, in human-like language.

Under Chinese regulations, AI developers must conduct security assessments and submit filings on their algorithms to the authorities if their software is judged to have an impact on “public opinion”, according to the rules. They are also required to label AI-generated content.