‘Chinese Google’ Baidu to launch ChatGPT-like AI app in March

Shanghai (China), 7 Feb. The technology company Baidu, known as the ‘Chinese Google’, is completing the testing phase of an artificial intelligence (AI) application similar to ChatGPT that it has developed itself and plans to launch it next March.

As the company explained in a note to the media, the international name of this app will be ERNIE Bot; ERNIE is a language model introduced by Baidu in 2019, whose name derives from “enhanced representation through knowledge integration” in English.

Baidu’s announcement came just hours after US-based Google unveiled its own conversational AI, dubbed Bard, fueling a ‘battle’ in the fledgling sector after Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.

Baidu will precisely follow the evolution of Google and Microsoft AI to decide whether to open a private beta before the planned launch date of ERNIE Bot.

“Currently, no company in China has the same level of technology (in AI) as Baidu, especially in the field of natural language processing,” the company said in its statement.

Baidu shares shot up to 14.41% during the first part of the trading session on Tuesday in Hong Kong, which shows the optimism of investors about the news, which had already made headlines in the international press in the last days but that was not confirmed by the company until today.

Source