China’s Baidu Launched New ERNIE 4.0 AI Version to Rival GPT-4
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Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, has made a significant move by introducing ERNIE 4.0, their latest artificial intelligence chatbot. In a press release, Baidu explicitly positioned ERNIE 4.0 as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the latest version GPT-4. During their annual flagship event, Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li, confidently stated that “it is not inferior in any aspect to GPT-4”, making it a strong contender in the AI chatbot arena.
Onstage, Li demonstrated how the bot could quickly make a car commercial, solve tough math problems, and come up with the storyline for a martial arts novel from scratch. The bot mainly operates in Mandarin Chinese but can also handle English, though not as well.
Li mentioned that these demonstrations showed that the bot has made significant improvements in understanding questions, creating complex responses, and remembering information.
While generating ideas for the novel, the bot was able to remember what it had been told before and create complex storylines with conflicts and characters, according to Li.
He said, “We used to complain that AI wasn’t very smart, But today, it understands almost everything you say, and in many cases, it understands what you’re saying better than your friends or your colleagues.”
China’s Turning Point
Charlie Dai, vice president and research director of technology at Forrester, mentioned that Baidu claims to be the first vendor in China that can perform at the level of GPT-4. While more evidence is needed to confirm this, he’s cautiously optimistic due to China’s long-term investments in AI.
In contrast to a previous presentation that didn’t impress investors because it was pre-recorded, Baidu’s CEO, Li, demonstrated the bot’s abilities in real-time. However, this didn’t excite investors much, as Baidu’s shares in Hong Kong fell by 1.4% after the presentation.
Baidu, has been a frontrunner in China’s efforts to benefit from the excitement surrounding generative AI, which is the technology behind systems like ChatGPT and its successor, GPT-4.
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The company based in Beijing introduced ERNIE Bot in March and later made it available to the public in August.
The latest version will initially be rolled out to users by invitation, as mentioned by Li. However, the company hasn’t provided a specific date for when it will be accessible to the general public.
ERNIE Bot quickly gained popularity, amassing over 45 million users and even reaching the top position on Chinese app stores at one point, according to the company. In comparison, ChatGPT, which was released in November of the previous year, had over 100 million users in its first two months, as reported by Goldman Sachs.
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