Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng speaks at the unveiling of Baidus AI chatbot Ernie Bot at an event in Beijing on March 16, 2023.
Baidu's much-anticipated ChatGPT rival, Ernie Bot, has won praise from reviewers for its Chinese language skills. According to South China Morning Post (SCMP), this turned around early disappointment for the bot's launch and drove the company's stock price up by 15% in Hong Kong on Friday morning, Mar. 17.
Early Disappointment
When Baidu announced its new artificial intelligence (AI) product without a live demonstration on Thursday, Mar. 16, the share price dropped by 6.4%. Thus, Friday's increase came as a pleasant surprise.
The Chinese internet search engine firm disclosed that only a restricted group of users would have early access to a beta through invitation codes. But as more individuals were able to try out the software, favorable reviews began to surface on the web.
When brokerages got an opportunity to try out the new Baidu software, the stock on the Nasdaq rose 3.8%, closing at $138.16 on Thursday.
In a report published by Citigroup, experts said that although Ernie Bot was not flawless, it could answer even the most ludicrous and difficult queries.
See Also: China AI: Baidu Ernie, the ChatGPT Rival, Is Not Doing so Good on its Launch
Ernie vs. GPT-4
OpenAI's GPT-4 launch, the most recent iteration of the startup's big language model, overshadowed Baidu's Ernie Bot premiere the day before.
On Thursday, OpenAI investor and tech giant, Microsoft, released the Copilot assistant powered by GPT-4 for Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
While GPT-4 is available to all users of ChatGPT Plus, it is still largely driven by OpenAI's earlier GPT-3.5 model.
Invited users have said that Ernie Bot shines in certain respects but falls short in others, as further reported by SCMP.
Web3SkyCity, a tech blogger, claims that it performs a better job at translating English into Chinese language than GPT-4. In a blog posted on WeChat on Friday, the blogger put the two AI tools to the test by having them interpret well-known passages from poets William Shakespeare and Robert Frost. In contrast, Web3SkyCity claimed that GPT-4 provided superior translation from Chinese to English.
Ernie Bot can also offer up-to-the-minute statistics, but ChatGPT can only supply data up to 2021.
It was determined by Sina, a news website, that Ernie Bot could predict tomorrow's weather essentially the same as what the weather app states. ChatGPT, on the other hand, was unable to do so. Nevertheless, ChatGPT is reportedly superior at giving information and producing computer code.
What's Next
The Baidu search engine is the most popular in China, and this is only the beginning of how Ernie Bot will be used throughout Baidu's many services. To "reshape the way information is generated and presented," as Baidu put it, is the company's stated mission.
The technology will reportedly be integrated into other services, such as Baidu's Xiaodu smart speaker, Apollo autonomous driving, and iQiyi video platform.
See Also: Warp Introduces ChatGPT-like AI Tool to Help Developers Use Terminal
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