Oluwanifemi Ojo
The ChatGPT-style project known as “Ernie Bot” would undergo complete internal testing in March, joining the technology race as artificial intelligence gathers momentum.
Reuters reported that this was said on Tuesday by China’s Baidu, the biggest search engine in China.
According to Baidu, Ernie means “Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration.” Baidu, which was introduced in 2019, is a large language model powered by AI.
It said, “It has evolved through time to be capable of tasks including language processing, language production, and text-to-image generation.”
The Hong Kong-listed shares of the global search engine giants, Baidu increased by as much as 13.4% in response to the news.
Reuters was informed by a source with knowledge of the situation last week that Baidu intended to launch this service in March. According to the source, Baidu plans to make the service accessible as a standalone application and progressively incorporate chatbot-generated results into its search engine when users conduct searches.
This generative artificial intelligence can produce text or other content when needed while saving the time of workers. Since its introduction, it has attracted many venture capital investment and interest from tech companies, notably in Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI has been the centre of much buzz since it was released in November. It is not available in China but some users have found ways to access the service.
Beijing-based Baidu has been making significant investments in AI technologies, particularly in cloud services, processors, and autonomous driving, as it strives to diversify its revenue sources.
