The Chinese internet giant Baidu unveiled yesterday in Beijing Ernie Bot, its answer to the American conversational robot ChatGPT.
ChatGPT, always imitated, never equaled? The Chinese internet giant Baidu unveiled yesterday in Beijing Ernie Bot, its answer to the American chatbot ChatGPT developed by OpenAI. An innovation that obviously did not convince the markets.
First technology company to want to develop a conversational robot in its country, the Chinese Google is disappointing on several points. He only featured a beta version of Ernie Bot. No launch date has yet been announced. In addition, the chabot only works in Mandarin and only targets the Chinese market. The interface understands some Chinese dialects, but it’s not as good in English, admitted Robin Li, the group’s general manager, who introduced his Ernie Botsans to demonstrate its capabilities. Determined to bury the project even before its official release, Robin Li added that his chatbot was “lower” to ChatGPT. Baidu’s action paid the costs of its director’s honesty and immediately fell 10% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where the group is listed.
In a context of fierce technological competition with the United States, the prowess of ChatGPT has aroused great interest in China. And this, even if the American interface is blocked without bypass software such as VPN. Like Baidu, which has been working on its chatbot since 2019, all tech giants, such as Tencent or Alibaba, are looking to develop their own conversational robot.