As Google, Microsoft Battle Over AI Heats Up, China's Answer Is 'Ernie Bot'

The battle to bring a rival for OpenAI‘s chatGPT intensifies as China’s Baidu Inc. BIDU says its AI-powered service “Ernie Bot‘s” internal testing will complete in March. 

What Happened: Baidu is integrating a chatGPT-style application into its primary search service. The company has now revealed that the internal testing for its project Ernie Bot, a chatGPT-style service, will be finished in March, allowing it to join the global race to have the most advanced generative artificial intelligence, reported Reuters.

See Also: Was This Written By A Bot Or A Human? ChatGPT Creator’s New Tool Can Help You Check (Or Not) 

Ernie stands for “Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration. The AI-powered service is a large language model introduced in 2019 that can now perform tasks like language understanding, language generation and text-to-image generation. 

Why It’s Important: Baidu plans to make Ernie Bot available as a standalone application. The company will then merge it into its search engine by integrating the chatbot-generated results. 

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This plan is similar to Microsoft Corporation’s MSFT, which is also working on launching a new version of its search engine, Bing, by incorporating chatGPT’s abilities. 

Previously it was reported that Alphabet Inc.‘s GOOG GOOGL Google declared a “code red,” and CEO Sundar Pichai tasked the teams to work aggressively on defining the company’s AI strategy to deal with the threat posed by chatGPT’s overnight popularity. 

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