Baidu’s ChatGPT-Like Ernie Bot Manages To Impress Analysts After Disappointing Launch Event

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as another key battleground in China's ongoing technological arms race against the U.S. And right now, Baidu is seen as the Asian superpower's strongest bet in this field, with its just-launched chatbot.

Credit: Baidu

The Chinese search engine giant on Thursday, 16 March unveiled the latest version of ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) Bot, a ChatGPT-like system that the company has been developing for over a decade now. The system was touted to be as capable as GPT-4, which is the latest iteration of OpenAI's language model, and the same system powering the upgraded Bing search engine.

ERNIE Bot's launch event, however, disappointed investors who were hoping to witness a real-time demo of the technology, according to Bloomberg. Many also poked fun at the event on social media as it failed to showcase ERNIE's capabilities. The questions that the system were made to answer were said to be rudimentary, and could have been addressed by any existing search engine.

But analysts who got a chance to go hands-on with Baidu's technology had a lot of positive things to say, helping the company's stock jump more than 14% today after dropping 6.4% yesterday.

"We tried testing ERNIE Bot for a few tasks like advice, analysis, paper writing, picture generation and we are satisfied with the results," said Bank of America analysts. They also said the system is "not static" and capable of learning and improving as it goes, though right now the sample size is still small. Other analysts have also pointed out that, despite the system not being perfect, it's still able to answer complex and absurd questions.

Currently, China's AI innovations still lag behind that of their U.S. counterparts, but it could only be a matter of time before they catch up, with roll outs becoming more rapid and access to data becoming wider. ERNIE Bot, for example, has access to 550 billion facts in its knowledge graph that are focused on the Chinese market.

Baidu CEO Robin Li said during ERNIE Bot's launch that 650 companies have already committed to using the technology, even though it's not ready yet for public access. He also said that the company chose to rush the unveiling of the technology to compete with the sudden rise in popularity of ChatGPT.

Baidu's latest version of ERNIE Bot, a ChatGPT-like system that the company has been developing for over a decade now, failed to wow investors when it launched, resulting in the company's stocks dropping by 6.4%.
But analysts who got a chance to go hands-on with the technology had a lot of positive things to say, leading the stocks to bounce back by 14%.
They said, while the system isn't perfect, it's capable of continuously learning and answering complex and absurd questions.