Chinese search giant Baidu will launch a ChatGPT-style bot
China’s largest search company Baidu plans to launch an artificial intelligence chatbot similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in March. This could be China’s most visible entry into the race fueled by advances in artificial intelligence technology, reports Bloomberg.
Baidu plans to launch the app by first integrating it into its main search services. The yet-to-be-named tool will allow users to receive conversational-style search results, similar to the popular OpenAI platform.
Baidu has spent billions of dollars on artificial intelligence research as part of a multi-year effort. Her Ernie system—a large-scale machine learning model that has been trained on data for several years—will form the basis of a future ChatGPT-like tool.
ChatGPT, a chatbot from OpenAI, has gained widespread popularity since its public debut in November, attracting more than a million users in a matter of days and sparking debate about the role of artificial intelligence in schools, offices, and households.
Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance control most of the Chinese internet. The search company is struggling to regain growth after falling further behind its larger rivals in areas such as mobile advertising, video, and social media. In addition to AI research, Baidu is also currently developing autonomous driving technology.
Besides Baidu, several Chinese startups are also exploring generative AI and have already attracted investors such as Sequoia and Sinovation Ventures.