Chinese search giant Baidu unveils its AI chatbot Ernie

Baidu, a Chinese technology giant, unveiled its much-awaited AI-powered chatbot called Ernie Bot on Thursday. However, the company disappointed investors with its use of pre-recorded videos and the lack of a public launch, which led to a decline in its shares. The presentation lasted just over an hour, and Baidu limited it to brief videos that demonstrated Ernie Bot’s capabilities. These included carrying out mathematical calculations, speaking in Chinese dialects, and generating video and image content based on text prompts.

Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which launched in November 2020 as a free-to-use chatbot for the public, Baidu’s Ernie Bot is only available for trial to an initial group of users with invitation codes. Companies can apply to embed the bot into their products via Baidu’s cloud platform. The lack of a soft launch date also led to negative sentiments among investors.

Ernie Bot is seen as a significant development in China’s race among tech giants and startups to develop a rival to Microsoft’s ChatGPT, which showcases the power of generative AI.

Ernie Bot is based on Baidu’s deep learning model called Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration (Ernie). Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li, spoke at the presentation, and the company’s Hong Kong shares (9888. HK) tumbled as much as 10% and eventually closed 6.4% lower, shaving over $3 billion off Baidu’s market valuation. Analysts have suggested that the presentation was more of a monologue and scripted than an interactive session that people were looking for.