As of late, artificial intelligence-based chatbots have become more popular due to the emergence of ChatGPT, however, this trend has yet to be adopted by the public in China. In a similar fashion to the ‘iPhone moment’, ChatGPT had an estimated 100 million monthly active users in November 2020. This AI Chatbot is incredibly advanced; having the ability to use big data to generate human-like conversations in areas such as poems and business strategies.
Due to Chinese government restrictions, Chinese citizens have not been able to use ChatGPT due to it being unavailable within the country, as well as access to websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google. The Chinese government recently released draft rules for the regulation of AI-generated content, this includes a public comment period that can last until the 10th of May.
In attempt to emulate the sensations caused from ChatGPT, companies such as Alibaba Cloud and Kunlun Tech released their own versions. Over 200,000 requests from enterprises have been received by Alibaba Cloud for their own AI-Chatbot, Tongyi Qianwen, which is based on the same foundations as ChatGPT. Kunlun Tech, one of Alibaba Cloud’s partners, has similarly released the ‘Tiangong’; an AI chatbot that is invite-only and similarly advanced to that of ChatGPT.
Following Baidu’s launch of their own AI-chatbot, Ernie Bot, on the 16th of March, the user waitlist had exceeded 1.2 million in less than a week. Unfortunately, there have not been any updates on this since and the only way to subscribe to it is by entering a mainland Chinese phone number and local ID.
The companies mentioned in this article, Alibaba Cloud and Kunlun, are both leading Chinese digital services providers. Alibaba Cloud specializes in providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence, while Kunlun centralizes in gaming and entertainment.
The person mentioned in this article is Wang Haifeng, Chief Technology Officer of Baidu. He made an appearance at the unveiling of Ernie Bot in Beijing on the 16th of March, 2023. He is a key figure in the development of Baidu’s AI technology, first being appointed in 2018 as the tech director of Baidu Core technology department. He is also an entrepreneur and investor having been involved with multiple companies such as Gridsum Technology and, previously at Google, worked on building several projects such as Google Street View and Google Translate.
