Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li unveils Ernie Bot 4 at Baidu World 2023 in Beijing on October 17, 2023. The latest version of Baidu’s chatbot matches the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4, Li said. Photo: Bloomberg
Chinese internet search giant Baidu has unveiled an updated version of its ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot with a claim that it is as powerful as OpenAI’s GPT-4, as the technology firm demonstrates its ambition in generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The company’s co-founder and CEO Robin Li Yanhong demoed Ernie Bot 4 on Tuesday at the Baidu World 2023 conference in Beijing. The billionaire showcased the bot’s prowess in understanding complex questions, generating pictures and handling basic arithmetic.
“Ernie Bot has completed a series of significant updates in its abilities of understanding, prompting, reasoning and memorising,” Li said. “Its generalised abilities are by no means inferior compared to GPT-4.”
Amid a race to catch up with OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed start-up that launched ChatGPT in November 2022, Chinese firms have unveiled more than 100 large language models this year.
ChatGPT and rival products like Google’s Bard are not officially available in mainland China or Hong Kong, although Microsoft has been pushing its GPT-4-powered Bing Chat in the region. In the absence of foreign players, Chinese tech giants from traditional internet firms like Baidu and Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, to hardware makers like Vivo and Oppo have been pushing their own AI products that are designed to avoid the kinds of sensitive questions and answers that have made third-party ChatGPT apps a target of local regulators.
Chinese authorities have issued new guidelines and rules this year meant to ensure AI-generated content aligns with official narratives. A proposed regulation published by a government body this week, for instance, suggests using a blacklist system to block LLM training data materials in which more than 5 per cent of the content is deemed illegal.
When asked questions on topics considered sensitive in China, Baidu’s Ernie Bot shuts down that dialogue by suggesting other topics of conversation.
Baidu previously said its Ernie Bot 3.5 had surpassed OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 in comprehension when it rolled out that version in June. It even outperformed GPT-4 in some Chinese-language capabilities, the company said.
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How does China’s AI stack up against ChatGPT?
How does China’s AI stack up against ChatGPT?
In recent months, Baidu has revamped a number of its apps including search and maps to include new capabilities that draw on Ernie Bot, according to the search firm.
Baidu first launched Ernie Bot trials in March, and opened it up to the general public after getting government approval in August. It now has a user base of 45 million and 54,000 developers, Baidu chief technology officer Wang Haifeng said on Tuesday.
Also announced at the conference is a new enterprise-grade AI tool to help businesses write market analysis reports.
Baidu shares in Hong Kong were down 1.7 per cent on Tuesday afternoon.
