China's Baidu makes AI chatbot Ernie Bot publicly available
Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu has made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model, Ernie Bot, fully available to the public
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model fully available to the public Thursday, raising the company’s stock price by over 3% following the announcement.
Beijing sees artificial intelligence as a key industry to rival the United States and aims to become a global leader by 2030. Chinese technology firms have also raced to unveil their generative AI models — in which algorithms allow the technology to produce and create new content — after U.S. firm OpenAI launched the widely popular ChatGPT.
Baidu said Thursday that Ernie Bot would be fully open to the general public via an app or an official website.
By releasing the model publicly, Baidu will be able to collect massive real-world human feedback, according to Baidu CEO Robin Li, who said this would in turn help improve Ernie and Baidu’s foundation models.
Like Europe, China has made efforts in recent months to regulate the generative AI industry.
China issued AI regulations Aug. 15 requiring companies to carry out a security review and obtain approvals before their product can be publicly launched. Beijing also requires companies providing such generative AI services to comply with government requests for technology and data.
The U.S. does not currently have regulations in place.
Baidu CEO Li said he was optimistic and described the AI regulations as “more pro-innovation than regulation” in the company’s earnings call earlier in August.
Two other AI companies in China, Baichuan and Zhipu AI, also launched their AI language models Thursday.