Chinese search giant Baidu defends AI research capabilities after its ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot draws a turkey for Turkey

  • One influencer posted several AI-generated images, asking if Baidu simply translated the Chinese into English and used foreign image generators
  • By Thursday noon, Ernie Bot could differentiate a crane bird from the machine, and did not mix up turkey and the country

Coco Fengin Beijing
Baidu’s Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang speaks at the unveiling of Baidu’s AI chatbot Ernie Bot in Beijing, March 16, 2023. Photo: AFP

Chinese tech giant Baidu, which last week launched its ChatGPT alternative Ernie Bot, said on Thursday that the product was “totally self-developed” after some users expressed concerns that the company may have copied its chatbot’s text-to-image capability from overseas.

Hilarious images generated by the Ernie Bot started to surface online earlier this week, as users found the chatbot drew a turkey, the bird, when asked for the country Turkey, and a crane - the bird - instead of the machine used for lifting heavy objects. These images were generated in spite of the Chinese-language prompts and use of completely different characters for each word.

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