China’s ChatGPT: Tech giant Baidu unveils “Ernie,” the Chinese answer to AI chatbot technologies

Beijing — Days just soon after frequent artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT’s developer OpenAI released its most existing version, GPT4, Chinese tech giant Baidu, perfect identified for its search engine and map options in the nation, revealed its AI answer to the planet. In a prerecorded video presentation, Baidu’s celebrity founder Robin Li showcased the “Ernie” (Enhanced Representation of Information and facts Integration) chatbot, which he stated could comprehend human intentions and supply responses approaching human level.

The service hasn’t on the other hand been released for the frequent public to try out, but the occasion listed functions such as understanding Chinese language, producing writing, and performing mathematical calculations, which overlap with ChatGPT’s functionality.

There had been some highlights all through the presentation, such as the presentation of a poster that Ernie was stated to have conjured up mostly primarily based on text descriptions, but common, investors seemed unimpressed with the prerecorded launch.

Baidu’s stock worth on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange fell by as a lot as ten% at 1 certain point all through the unveiling, but the stock recouped its losses in Friday trading.

Robin Li, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu Inc., appears in a launch occasion for the company’s Ernie chatbot in Beijing, China, on March 16, 2023.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg by means of Getty Images

The Reuters news agency stated a restricted quantity of folks currently received codes to try the Ernie application system just soon after the launch on Thursday, quickly turning to social media platforms to give you their evaluations, like some side-by-side comparisons with American-designed chatbots such as Microsoft’s Bing, which utilizes ChatGPT technologies.

A single person stated on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo that Ernie had managed to supply an “O.K.” response to a query about a philosopher, for instance, but they noted that there was “a definite gap involving Ernie bot and Bing.”

Reuters quoted the reviewer, a technologies blogger who goes by the deal with Chapingjun, with substantially far more than two.4 million followers on Wiebo, as saying the gap in functionality was “not insanely enormous,” and noting that, “in certain inquiries (Ernie) even performed superior than Bing.”

In spite of the lackluster launch occasion, Ernie is most probably to take pleasure in a essential industry location advantage on its residence turf far more than U.S.-designed products, due to every China’s individual drive for technological independence, and Western sanctions.

At the annual meeting of China’s legislature that wrapped up Monday, a revamp of China’s science and technologies ministry was announced, with the stated aim of pursuing “self-reliance” amid escalating U.S. restrictions on the sale of sophisticated processing chips and manufacturing gear to China.

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