Despite escalating competition, Baidu said on Tuesday that Ernie Bot, their ChatGPT AI rival chatbot, has amassed over 200 million users, solidifying its position as the top chatbot in China.
CEO Robin Li, who is also co-founder and chairman of Baidu, disclosed this while delivering the opening speech at a conference in Shenzhen on Tuesday.
Baidu launched its ChatGPT-like chatbot, Ernie, over a year ago. Beijing approved its public use in August, and by December, the chatbot’s user base had doubled to over 100 million.
The chatbot is built around Ernie, a big language model from Baidu. Certain mobile devices have been equipped with Ernie’s AI capabilities by smartphone firms Samsung and Honour.
Li further emphasised that 200 million requests are sent to Ernie Bot’s application programming interface (API) every day, demonstrating how frequently users interact with the chatbot for different purposes.
Reaching 85,000, the number of enterprise clients utilising Ernie Bot has also experienced notable development.
Li informed analysts in February that Baidu was beginning to make money from Ernie, and that by the end of the fourth quarter, the business had made several hundred million yuan by leveraging AI to enhance its advertising offerings and assist other businesses in creating their models.
Ernie Bot, one of the first eight AI chatbots Beijing has authorised, was the first domestically produced ChatGPT-like chatbot to be unveiled in China in March. However, it wasn’t until August that it received approval for public release.
“In 2024, we expect AI revenues contribution to become more meaningful, while our core business will remain resilient,” Li said during a late February earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.
Newsng gathered that Baidu is set to release first-quarter results on May 16.
We earlier reported that OpenAI added new features to its artificial intelligence (AI) model GPT-4 Turbo, primarily in the domains of writing, logic, and mathematics.