China’s tech giant Baidu recently revealed its own AI chatbot – Ernie Bot. The product launch originally was supposed to be live-streamed, but due to the change of format, the company’s Hong Kong-listed shares went down 4.5%. Baidu CEO Robin Li said the chatbot was still not perfected, but due to high demand it had to be presented in a pre-recorded video demonstration. Ernie Bot was asked questions about a novel called The Three-Body Problem, as well as to make an image with prompts. Ernie stands for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, and 650 companies have already signed up to use the bot.
The company, which is known in China for its search engine, has been focusing more on Artificial Intelligence and its application in autonomous driving technology and other AI applications. Baidu’s introduction of Ernie Bot follows the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. The biggest challenge for Chinese developers is to create a chatbot that could perform well but still comply with strict regulations and censorship set by the government. Despite being in Chinese, Ernie Bot has been seen to produce factual errors and avoid political questions when asked. There is no set public launch date yet, but interested companies can sign up to test the industry-focused version on March 31.
Robin Li is the CEO of Baidu and the founder of Chinese search engine giant. He is a Chinese entrepreneur and Internet pioneer, with a wealth of experience in building and expanding leading companies. Li also previously worked as CTO of Infoseek China and General Manager of its Chinese search engine, and later he took the position of COO of China Yahoo!, helping to expand the Internet giant throughout China. He joined Baidu in 2004 and has established the company as the country’s leading search engine, and subsequently moved the company’s focus to AI and machine learning. Li holds a Bachelor’s degree in engineering from Peking University, and a Master’s degree in technology management from Carnegie Mellon University.
In conclusion, Baidu’s introduction of Ernie Bot has sparked a lot of interest in the industry and AI chatbot technology in general. Although the chatbot still needs to be perfected and is challenged by Chinese regulations and censorship, a great number of companies has already shown their interest and signed up for testing. And with the CEO Robin Li, who has a rich experience in the Internet industry, the future of the AI chatbot Ernie Bot is likely to be bright.
