Baidu announced on Feb. 7 that it would finish internal testing of a ChatGPT-style project called "Ernie Bot" in March, joining a worldwide competition as interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) grows.
Ernie, which stands for "Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration," is a huge language model powered by AI that was introduced in 2019, according to Baidu. It has gradually developed the capacity to do tasks such as language comprehension, language production, and text-to-image generation.
Baidu's Hong Kong-listed shares rose as high as 13.4% in response to the announcement.
Generative artificial intelligence, the technology that can generate prose or other content on demand and free up the time of white-collar professionals, has attracted major venture capital investment and interest from technology companies, particularly in Silicon Valley.
ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that was released in November and has generated much excitement, defines the category. ChatGPT is unavailable in China, but some users have discovered workarounds to gain access.
Google unveiled "Bard" a new chatbot tool, on Monday, presumably to compete with the viral success of ChatGPT.
Bard is based on a broad language model, similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which was released to the public at the end of November. These algorithms are trained on vast amounts of web data to generate persuasive responses to user queries.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, stated in a blog post that Bard will be made accessible to "trusted testers" on Monday, with intentions to offer it to the broader public "in the coming weeks."
Bard aspires to blend the richness of the world's knowledge with the strength, intelligence, and creativity of our massive language models, as described by Pichai. It uses web-based data to produce timely, high-quality responses.
According to rumors, Google's management has declared a "code red" crisis for its search company as a result of ChatGPT's massive popularity. Paul Buchheit, one of the creators of Gmail, cautioned in a 2016 tweet that the advent of artificial intelligence might cause Google to face "may be only a year or two away from total disruption" within two years.
Microsoft, which has admitted plans to invest billions in OpenAI, has already announced that it will integrate the tool into some of its products; it is also rumored that it will be incorporated into its Bing search engine.
Baidu, situated in Beijing, has been a pioneer in China for several technological advancements. Late in 2021, when the metaverse became a new buzzword, the company introduced "XiRang" as China's first metaverse platform.
