Ernie: China’s Baidu cancels public launch of ChatGPT competitor ‘Ernie’: Here’s why – Times of India

Earlier this month, Chinese search engine giant Baidu announced the company’s “Ernie Bot“, in what was called a watershed moment for China’s technology industry. But the company has reportedly cancelled a planned livestreamed product launch of the artificial intelligence (AI)-chatbot.
Citing a statement by the company, news agency Reuters reported that the webcast scheduled for Monday (March 27) was switched to a closed-door meeting with the first batch of companies that are testing the product.
The company said that the change in format was in order to satisfy the “strong demand” from 120,000 companies that had applied to test Ernie bot. It also said that this would be the first of many closed-door meetings, Reuters reported.

Ernie bot features
In a separate report, the news agency said that Baidu shared some pre-recorded videos demoing its AI-powered chatbot’s industry-focused capabilities. The videos reportedly showed Ernie summarising financial statements and producing powerpoint presentations.
They also showed the chatbot producing travel itineraries “and virtual, human-like livestreamers that can advertise products using scripts tailored to the user’s needs.”
Additionally, there were some images shared by a Baidu spokesperson in a media-facing group on WeChat suggesting that the chatbot has a wider range of skills than previously displayed.

Ernie bot launch
Baidu CEO Robin Li introduced Ernie bot on March 16 as an answer to ChatGPT and demos displayed the Chinese chatbot’s different capabilities. However, the presentation was limited with brief videos showing Ernie carrying out mathematical calculations and generating a video and image with text prompts. The use of pre-recorded videos reportedly disappointed investors.
The technology industry has seen a boom in AI chatbots since ChatGPT made its debut in November last year. Microsoft invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, and launched Bing with AI capabilities. Recently, Google opened a limited preview of its AI chatbot Bard, which is powered by a large language model (LLM) LaMDA.