Baidu’s ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot has more than 100m users: Chief technological officer

BEIJING - Baidu’s ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot has garnered more than 100 million users, said the Chinese Internet company’s chief technology officer Wang Haifeng on Thursday (Dec 28).

The user base milestone comes after Baidu opened Ernie Bot to the public in August.

This was preceded by a partial unveiling and more than five-month trial period where select users could test the chatbot’s capabilities.

Analysts said that while the partial unveiling in March was underwhelming, it still gave the company a valuable first-mover advantage in a market that has since become crowded with dozens of players, as Chinese tech companies, large and small, look to develop their own chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

This followed the launch in late 2022 of US research organisation Open AI’s ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing software application in the world within six months.

Since then, investors have valued OpenAI at more than US$80 billion (S$105 billion). While OpenAI’s parent is a non-profit, Microsoft has invested US$13 billion in a for-profit subsidiary, for what would be a 49 per cent stake.

In 2023, Baidu chief executive Robin Li repeatedly touted the potential for Ernie Bot and related products to help the company gain market share in its mainstream businesses, including search engine, cloud, and smart cars.

According to a ranking published on Dec 28 by SuperCLUE, which ranks generative AI-powered chatbots, Ernie Bot leads all Chinese chatbots, but its score of 79.02 is more than 10 points lower than the latest version of ChatGPT.

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