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

Beijing — Days after developer OpenAI of popular artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT released its latest version GPT4, Chinese tech giant Baidu, best known in the country for its search engine and mapping services, unveiled its AI answer to the world. In a pre-recorded video presentation, Baidu’s celebrity founder Robin Li introduced the chatbot “Ernie” (Enhanced Representation of Knowledge Integration), which he says can understand human intent and provide human-level responses.

The service has not yet been released to the general public for testing, but the event listed features such as understanding the Chinese language, generating script and performing math calculations that overlap with ChatGPT’s functionality.

There were a few highlights during the presentation, such as the unveiling of a poster that Ernie is said to have conjured up using text descriptions, but overall investors were unimpressed by the pre-recorded launch.

Baidu’s share price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange fell as much as 10% at one point during the unveiling, but the stock recouped losses in Friday trading.

Robin Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Baidu Inc., speaks at a launch event for the company’s Ernie chatbot in Beijing, China, March 16, 2023. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Reuters news agency said a limited number of people were given codes to try the Ernie software after Thursday’s launch and were quick to reach out to social media platforms to offer their reviews, including some head-to-head comparisons with American-made ones Chatbots like those of Microsoft Bing, which uses ChatGPT technology.

For example, one person on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo said that Ernie managed to give an “OK” answer to a question about a philosopher, but they noted that there was “a definite gap between Ernie Bot and Bing.” give.

Reuters quoted the reviewer, a tech blogger named Chapingjun with more than 2.4 million followers on Wiebo, as saying the functionality gap is “not insanely big” and noting that “on certain issues (Ernie) even a Performed better than Bing.”

Despite the lackluster launch event, Ernie is likely to enjoy a significant market advantage on its domestic turf over US-made products, both due to China’s own push for technological independence and Western sanctions.

A redesign of China’s science and technology ministry was announced at the annual session of China’s legislature, which ended on Monday, with the stated aim of seeking “self-sufficiency” amid increasing U.S. restrictions on sales of advanced processing chips and manufacturing equipment to China.

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