Baidu rolls out ChatGPT rival to public
Internet giant Baidu rolled out its ChatGPT rival Ernie Bot to the public on Thursday, in a major leap for the country's tech sector as it aims to cash in on the global artificial intelligence gold rush. The Chinese government introduced fresh regulations this month for AI developers, aiming to allow them to stay in the race with the likes of Microsoft and OpenAI. Ernie Bot is one of the first domestic AI apps to be fully available to the public in China. Also on Thursday, China’s Sensetime said its chat bot, Sensechat, has also become fully available to serve users. "We are thrilled to share that Ernie Bot is now fully open to the general public starting August 31," Baidu said in a statement on Thursday. "In addition to Ernie Bot, Baidu is set to launch a suite of new AI-native apps that allow users to fully experience the four core abilities of generative AI: understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory." Ernie Bot was released in March but its availability was limited. By making it widely available, Baidu will be able to gain "massive" human feedback to improve the app at a swift pace, CEO Robin Li was quoted as saying in the statement. The rapid success of US-based OpenAI's ChatGPT – which is banned in China – sparked an international race to develop rival apps, including image and video generators, but also widespread alarm about the potential for abuse and disinformation. The nation’s generative AI apps must "adhere to the core values of socialism" and refrain from threatening national security and promoting terrorism, violence, or "ethnic hatred", according to the guidelines published this month. Service providers must also conduct security assessments and submit filings on their algorithms to the authorities if their software is judged to have an impact on "public opinion", according to the rules. (AFP/Reuters)