HONG KONG — Chinese technology company Baidu said Tuesday it was launching an artificial intelligence chatbot similar to ChatGPT, joining a global race to master the technology.
The chatbot, called “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese and “ERNIE Bot” in English, is being tested internally and will be released publicly in March, Baidu said in a statement. ERNIE stands for “Enhanced Representation Through Knowledge Integration”.
Like ChatGPT, Baidu’s chatbot generates sophisticated responses to written prompts, allowing users to create articles, essays, jokes, and even poetry.
Shares of the Hong Kong-listed company soared on the announcement, ending Tuesday up more than 15% on their best day in nearly a year. Other Chinese AI stocks also gained.
Baidu’s announcement follows a similar one on Monday by Google, which said it would launch an artificial intelligence chatbot called “Bard” in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, the company is opening it up to “trusted testers,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.
“We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard’s responses meet a high level of quality, security, and robustness to real-world data,” he said. “We are excited about this testing phase which will help us continue to learn and improve the quality and speed of Bard.”
ChatGPT, which is not available in China, has become an international sensation since it was launched in November by American artificial intelligence company OpenAI.
The start-up has received strong backing from Microsoft, which announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment last month to accelerate advances in AI and “commercialize the resulting advanced AI technologies.”
Microsoft is holding a news event on Tuesday that is believed to be related to ChatGPT.
