China is also embarking on the race for consumer AI with Ernie Bot, its first conversational robot. Limited to Mandarin and still imperfect, this Chinese ChatGPT however struggled to convince during its presentation…
Ever since ChatGPT, OpenAI’s revolutionary chatbot, landed on the internet at the end of 2022, everyone seems to want to integrate it into their services, or even develop their own AI. After the acquisition of OpenAI by Microsoft and the integration of GPT-4 in Bing, then the presentation of Google Bard, it is China’s turn to embark on the AI race. It is the search engine Baidu – the Chinese Google – which sticks to it with Ernie Bot, an artificial intelligence which is based on the language model of the company called ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration). Like ChatGPT, it can understand and answer user questions asked in Mandarin – it also takes into account some Chinese dialects, and understands English to a lesser degree. However, his presentation was quite a flop, disappointing investors who immediately lowered Baidu’s share price on the stock market.
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Ernie Bot: a basic ChatGPT limited to Mandarin
Ernie Bot was designed by Baidu to improve the quality of responses from virtual assistants in China. At the time of his presentation, which was a pre-recorded video – which harmed him –, Ernie Bot was able to provide answers to a wide variety of questions, but what he can do is still relatively simple.. Thus, he can write a poem, imagine an advertisement and solve a mathematical problem, such as reports Radio France. It would currently be at the same level as ChatGPT in its 3.5 version. The chatbot is supposed to integrate Baidu’s search engine, like Microsoft’s AI with Bing, but not only. As reported Neowin, the company seeks to create an ecosystem around it with applications for smart cars, the cloud and other sectors. 650 companies have already agreed to be part of this ecosystem, including a Shaolin temple and several Chinese state media. And given that it supports Mandarin, abides by local laws, and submits to censorship, no doubt Xi Jinping’s government is encouraging its adoption.
However, Ernie Bot’s presentation did not convince and led to a loss of 6.4% of the group’s share on the Hong Kong stock exchange – things have since returned to normal. The fault of a scripted conference, without great surprise and without risk taking, not to mention that the moment was badly chosen, the day after the announcement of GPT-4 by OpenAI – which impressed the whole world with its novelties. “I can’t say we’re quite ready. Benchmarking Ernie Bot against ChatGPT, or even GPT-4 is a high bar”concedes Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, who admits that the presentation of his AI was due to market pressure, in a context of particularly high expectations for artificial intelligence.
But despite its failed introduction to the public and investors, 30,000 users have already joined the waiting list of the beta version. It is still unknown when the AI will be released to the general public and whether the chatbot will be available in other languages or in other countries around the world. Still, the United States and Europe should not show much enthusiasm because of the collection of data towards China, already criticized on other tools and applications of Chinese origin, starting with TikTok. ..