Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT has been the talk of the town since its introduction last year.
Many have tested it out in various situations, going so far as to write entire stories.
However, Chinese company Baidu recently launched Ernie Bot — short for “Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration” — that may soon give ChatGPT a run for its money.
Source: AP News
The bot can carry out mathematical calculations, generate images based on text prompts, and more.
AP News reported that Baidu Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Robin Li gave a presentation of Ernie Bot at its headquarters in Beijing on Thursday (16 Mar).
According to Reuters, he demonstrated the power of the new bot through a series of five pre-recorded videos.
Source: AP News
The audience witnessed the chatbot answering questions on the Chinese science fiction novel ‘The Three-Body Problem’ and completing mathematical calculations, among other tasks.
“Today’s announcement is a natural continuation of the hard work we have put in over the past many years,” Mr Li said.
“So why are we unveiling it today? Because the market demands it.”
Source: AP News
Just last month, the company announced that they were close to putting the finishing touches on the chatbot.
Unfortunately, the brief pre-recorded videos apparently did not live up to expectations.
Based on the report by AP News, Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares plummeted by 10% after the presentation.
Source: Seeking Alpha
Kai Wang, an analyst from financial services company Morningstar, pointed out that the presentation “was more of a monologue and scripted” instead of “an interactive session that people were looking for”.
The lack of a soft launch date may have sparked the negative feedback as well.
Chim Lee, a China tech analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, also told Al Jazeera that Mr Li “did not demonstrate Ernie’s capacity in a non-Chinese language environment”.
The CEO had even admitted that Ernie Bot is unable to understand and process English as well as it can with Chinese.
This, Mr Lee noted, “puts it behind ChatGPT, which is able to generate responses in English, Chinese and other languages”.
Despite this observation, Mr Li claimed that 650 companies have already signed up to use Ernie Bot.
Reuters reported that Ernie Bot will only be available for a group of users with invitation codes at first.
Apart from making the Ernie Bot accessible to external users, Baidu also plans to use the chatbot internally.
The company wants to use the chatbot to enhance its search engine while simultaneously making appliances, smart vehicles, and the cloud more efficient.
However, Mr Li noted that he does not intend for the bot to be used in geopolitics.
“Ernie Bot is not a tool of confrontation between China and the United States,” he cautioned.
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Featured image adapted from AP News.
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