HONG KONG. Baidu, the Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence company, unveiled its language model counterpart to ChatGPT for public access on Thursday, sparking a more than 3% increase in the company’s stock price post-announcement.
The move comes as China positions artificial intelligence as a strategic industry to rival the United States and aims to secure a global leadership position by 2030. Chinese tech firms have been in a race to introduce their generative AI models, which employ algorithms to generate fresh content, following the widespread success of the US-based firm OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In an announcement on Thursday, Baidu confirmed that Ernie Bot, its AI model capable of generating text and images in response to user queries and prompts, was fully accessible to the general public via the official website and a dedicated app available exclusively in China’s app stores. Shortly after its launch, the Ernie Bot app surged to the top of Apple’s iOS store charts in China for free apps.
Baidu CEO Robin Li highlighted that by making the model accessible to the public, Baidu can gather extensive real-world user feedback, which in turn will aid in refining the Ernie Bot and the foundational models developed by Baidu.
Parallel to developments in Europe, China has recently taken steps to regulate the generative AI sector. On August 15, China introduced AI regulations mandating companies to conduct security reviews and obtain approvals prior to launching their products for public use. Beijing also requires companies offering such generative AI services to comply with government requests for technology and data.
Unlike China, the United States currently lacks comparable regulations in this domain.
Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li, expressed optimism and characterized the AI regulations as “pro-innovation rather than restrictive” during the company’s earnings call earlier in August.
Concurrently, two other prominent AI firms in China, Baichuan and Zhipu AI, also unveiled their own AI language models on the same Thursday.
Gary P Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
