Baidu Says it will Integrate Chatbot Ernie Bot into Multiple Products

Latest seen on Baidu's use of AI Chatbots, Baidu seems to be going it alone.  Current accessible versions still only in simplified Chinese.

Baidu to integrate ChatGPT-style Ernie Bot across all operations  in Asia Nikkei

Chinese company sees opportunity as Beijing bans Microsoft-backed bot

Baidu says it will integrate chatbot Ernie Bot into multiple products.   Bans use of ChatGPT

CISSY ZHOU, Nikkei staff writer, February 23, 2023 

HONG KONG -- Chinese search giant Baidu will integrate its ChatGPT-style Ernie Bot across the company's operations after opening it to the public in March, co-founder and CEO Robin Li said Wednesday.

Baidu plans to embed Ernie Bot into its search service first, which the company thinks will attract more users and boost market share "in a profitable manner," Li told analysts in a conference call. Then the company intends to make the bot widely available to its intelligent driving unit and its business partners, and expects "more and more business owners and entrepreneurs" to build their own models and applications on Baidu's AI Cloud.

"Recently, with users raving about ChatGPT, large language models (LLMs) using generative AI have created a mega trend that will revolutionize many businesses," Li said. "Baidu is well positioned to capitalize on the imminent inflection point" in artificial intelligence.

Baidu, along with other Chinese tech companies, announced its upcoming launch of a ChatGPT-style bot this month after Microsoft-backed ChatGPT took the tech world by storm and Google introduced its AI chatbot Bard.

Ernie Bot, which initially may not be a chatbot but rather an embedded feature in Baidu's products, is built on tech the company said has been in development since 2019.

"We have been working on LLM for a few years. We launched Ernie in March 2019, and have scaled it up with well over 100 billion parameters," Li said, adding that it receives training via several billion user search requests and other applications daily. 

Chinese regulators have told domestic companies not to offer ChatGPT service amid growing alarm in Beijing over the AI-powered chatbot's uncensored replies to user queries, and tech companies also will need to report to regulators before they launch their own similar services, Nikkei reported Wednesday.   ... '