Is Baidu Ready To Take On OpenAI’s GPT-4 With Its New Chatbot Ernie?

China's Baidu has taken on the AI world with its upgraded Ernie chatbot!

Baidu, the Chinese technology behemoth, released Ernie 4.0, an updated version of its generative AI model, boasting that it could compete with OpenAI's groundbreaking GPT-4 model.

At a Beijing event, CEO Robin Li unveiled Ernie 4.0, highlighting the model's memory skills by having it write a martial arts novel in real-time. Also, he demonstrated how Ernie 4.0 can make commercials. Li showed off how users can now access features on Baidu Map with natural language searches powered by Ernie rather than having to sift through thousands of options manually.

Researchers, however, were not impressed as IDC researcher Lu Yanxia felt that there were no particularly noteworthy changes in the release of Ernie 4.0 compared to its predecessor. According to Lu, other major announcements made at the event were Baidu's plans to implement generative AI across all products.

"We should see significant improvements once Ernie 4.0 is used hands-on, but concrete upgrades aren't immediately clear," added Lu.

 

Can Baidu Compete With The AI Industry Leaders?

Baidu, which was started in Beijing in the year 2000 by Robin Lin and Eric Xu, is currently the fourth largest search engine in the entire globe. Over five billion searches are performed daily on Baidu by people all over the world. At the moment, Baidu has a 0.59 percent share of the global search engine industry.

However, the business dominates the Chinese search engine market with an 85 percent share. Baidu is used by 218 million people throughout the world daily. Almost all of Baidu's users (97.3%) are located in China. The workforce totals 45,000 strong, as stated by Statista and Web Tribunal.

The owner of China's most popular search engine is a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) models in China, helping to fuel a worldwide demand for the technology that began with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2016.

The company unveiled ErnieBot, a chatbot powered by Ernie, in March but investors were underwhelmed because they were only shown recorded demonstrations. In August, the government gave Baidu and other companies the green light to begin selling AI-powered consumer goods to the general public. Baidu's chief technology officer Wang Haifeng announced at the ceremony that 45 million people had used Ernie since it was made available to the public.

According to data from brokerage CLSA, China already has at least 130 large language models (LLMs), making up 40% of the global total and trailing behind only the United States' 50%. China even launched 79 new LLMs since 2020, according to reports by the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

As China's Baidu unleashes the upgraded Ernie 4.0, is the stage set for an AI showdown with OpenAI’s GPT-4? Or will OpenAI and leading AI businesses retain their dominance?

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