By the virtue of the promulgated wide release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the revelation of Microsoft’s AI makeover, Chinese search engine giant Baidu followed suit and introduced its chronicle in the world of Artificial Intelligence – AI tool Ernie Bot.
The hype around ChatGPT stemmed from its remarkable ability to generate conversational responses and from being an impressive AI natural language processing model. Ever since the model was released, the productivity cogwheels of tech competitors were pushed into overdrive modes to bring to the world, the closest equivalent of the OpenAI Chatbot.
One of the top competitors, the Baidu’s Ernie Bot release was unequivocally anticipated. On March 16th 2023, Baidu CEO Robin Li presented journalists with an hour’s worth of information, which just comprehended glimpses into the plausible capabilities of the Ernie bot through a series of pre-recorded demos.
Industry observers critiqued the lengthy presentation of Ernie bot’s answers as pre-recordings as a poor proposition instead of a live demonstration which could affirm the chatbot’s abilities. The investors were underwhelmed and Baidu shares slumped nearly 10 percent in wake of Li’s dismal conference.
Close to the failed demo that bid Baidu only two months to prepare, reports of substantial money moving into the company through a mystery investor were linked to the Ernie bot’s launch.
The lackluster unveiling at Li’s carefully orchestrated conference was a revelation of the deep cracks in the Chinese rival of ChatGPT, leading to speculations if Baidu avoided Ernie bot’s live demo because it had rushed to announce contenders, or if it was a sheer lack of confidence, or perhaps a lesson from Tech titan Google’s folly at the demo of its conversational AI Bard.
Industry specialists echoed these sentiments, noting that Baidu took less than two months to display something of value to the world.
“To leverage Ernie Bot to build an application ecosystem, it may be necessary for Baidu to demonstrate stronger performance abilities like reasoning. The first step is always the hardest, and Baidu is very courageous.”
– Fangbo Tao, former AI scientist at Alibaba
Baidu Nixes The Planned Livestream Of Ernie Bot:
Even the failed conference of Ernie bot in mid-March, was not detrimental to the stock price of Baidu – declining share prices rebounded the very next day, owing strongly to the demand of the Chinese corporate sector for generative artificial intelligence.
On Monday afternoon, the Chinese tech giant was slated for the much-advertised planned livestream product launch of the Ernie bot. In the wee hours of the morning, in a statement, Baidu canceled the scheduled event and redirected the webcast to a “closed-door” meeting with the first few companies tied to testing the product.
Baidu hailed this decision to change the format of the product launch, as a means to satisfy the strong demand from 120,000 companies that applied to Ernie bot’s testing and even added that this is the first of the innumerous closed-door meetings.
This ballistic move was prone to affect Baidu’s stock price – the Hong Kong-listed shares have fallen nearly 4.5 percent since the initial cancellation announcement.
Baidu’s Ernie Bot Proficiency Revealed:
Although the livestream was a setback, a Baidu spokesperson shared images and pre-recorded videos of the AI-powered Ernie bot, showcasing its industry-adept capabilities of summarizing financial statements and creating presentations in PowerPoint. This information was shared in Baidu’s AI Cloud division-hosted closed-door meeting.
Two weeks ago, the proficiency of generative artificial intelligence-based Ernie bot was displayed, but not limited to being able to generate images with text prompts and composing audios and poetry in Chinese dialects. Ernie bot can now also produce travel itineraries and tailor to the users’ needs with virtual product advertisers.
Other companies interested in signing up as a tester for the industry-focused version of the Ernie bot, can do so after March 31, while the regular version open for testing is available to users who can get invite codes.
