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Baidu’s ChatGPT alternative gets positive reviews for handling of Chinese translations as search giant’s stock jumps

  • Baidu’s stock jumped 15 per cent Friday morning after reviewers praised Ernie Bot’s English-to-Chinese translations and real-time information
  • ChatGPT is still better at providing knowledge and writing code, reviewers say, and OpenAI’s new GPT-4 model offers another leap forward

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Baidu founder Robin Li demonstrates the capabilities of Ernie Bot, its answer to ChatGPT, at company headquarters in Beijing on March 16, 2023. Photo: Handout
Coco Fengin Beijing
Ernie Bot, the highly anticipated ChatGPT alternative from Chinese internet search giant Baidu, has received recognition from reviewers for its Chinese language capabilities, reversing initial disappointment and pushing the company’s stock up 15 per cent in Hong Kong on Friday morning.
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The jump in share price came in sharp contrast with Thursday, when the price tumbled 6.4 per cent after Baidu unveiled its new artificial intelligence product without a live demonstration. The company also revealed that only select users would initially have access to a beta via invitation codes, but positive reviews started appearing online as more people gained access to the product.

Baidu’s stock on the Nasdaq closed up 3.8 per cent to US$138.16 on Thursday after brokerages had a chance to test the software. Citigroup analysts wrote that Ernie Bot, while not perfect, was able to answer most complicated and even absurd questions.

Baidu’s Ernie Bot debut came in the shadow of OpenAI’s launch the day before of GPT-4, the latest version of the start-up’s large language model. Microsoft, a backer of OpenAI, on Thursday introduced its GPT-4-powered Copilot assistant for its office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

ChatGPT is still primarily powered by OpenAI’s older GPT-3.5 model, but paying ChatGPT Plus users can access GPT-4.

Users who have been invited to test Ernie Bot said that the product has advantages in some areas but lags in others. Compared with GPT-4, it does better in translating English into Chinese, according to tech blogger Web3SkyCity. The blogger tested both services by getting them to translate famous lines by poets William Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

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When it comes to translating Chinese to English, however, GPT-4 was better, the Chinese blogger wrote in an article published to WeChat on Friday.

Ernie Bot is also able to provide real-time information, while ChatGPT is limited to data through 2021. When news portal Sina tested both Ernie Bot and ChatGPT, it found that the former could give the next day’s weather, which was “basically the same as what the weather app says”. But ChatGPT is “better at providing knowledge and writing computer code”, the report said.

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