Highlights:

  • Companies such as Microsoft are planning to invest billions in developing real-world applications.
  • The Chinese public is fully excited about this, commenting and sharing experiences on social media.

According to a recent report by Bloomberg, Baidu Inc., the Chinese search giant, intends to launch its own ChatGPT. It is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) bot having the capacity to understand and respond to users in conversational language.

OpenAI LLC-developed ChatGPT can understand and answer complicated natural language questions in a humanly conversational way. ChatGPT operates as a large language model with a human touch. Users find it very natural and get a response as if they are speaking to another person. This bot has been used to create code, provide customer support, and even for writing articles, although they could have errors.

To develop its own AI-based system based on a machine learning model, Baidu has been working for years. This model can operate within Ernie, its own market. The same will be used by its ChatGPT rival. Businesses and consumers cannot use ChatGPT inside the country as the Chinese internet is highly censored, and ChatGPT access is locked. So, Ernie was a necessary step by Baidu.

Ernie is trained in both English and Chinese language sources both from outside and inside China’s “great firewall.” Ernie has been trained with Baidu’s own products like Baidu News and Baidu Baike. Also, with outside sources such as Reddit, Wikipedia, and BookCorpus. This has been done to make it broader and wide for its users, as per the company’s own research paper. In consonance with the rules and regulations of China’s censorship laws, the company will limit its bot.

The Chinese public jumped on the ChatGPT bandwagon despite it being blocked off from the internet. People shared their experiences using screenshots and conversations with the AI chatbot on local social media.

ChatGPT has been gaining buzz on the internet since its debut. It is due to its immense business opportunities and potential capabilities. Some companies might have faced the fear of being left out if they failed to comply with this AI technology.

Reportedly, Microsoft intends to add a search feature to its search engine Bing which will be powered by ChatGPT. Also, it has frequently come up with talks to invest ten billion dollars in OpenAI. After BuzzFeed Inc. announced its intention to use the tools to produce more content. the digital media company’s shares jumped by 150%.

Robin Li, Chief Executive of Baidu, said that conversational AI and ChatGPT technologies have represented a new future that is changing the landscape of business, during an internal employee meeting attended by Bloomberg. He added, “I’m so glad that the technology we are pondering every day can attract so many people’s attention. That’s not easy.”