Baidu, a multinational technology giant based in China, improved its AI model, Ernie 4.0 Turbo, on Friday in an attempt to gain the upper hand in the country’s fierce AI competition.
The announcement coincides with OpenAI’s plans to limit access to its API beginning on July 9 from China and other nations.
This action might force Chinese businesses that depend on its technology to collapse.
ERNIE, or Enhanced Representation via Knowledge Integration, a large language model, which was developed internally, serves as the foundation for the model.
The company’s Chief Technology Officer Wang Haifeng stated at a corporate event that the chatbot’s mobile version has amassed more than 1 million users in just one day after its introduction, 100 million by the end of 2023, and 300 million users overall since its launch, as reported by Reuters.
Following Beijing’s clearance in August 2023, Baidu is among several other companies that have released AI chatbots. Regulation approval is a must for Chinese enterprises looking to publish AI products for the mainstream market; these companies must submit assessments.
Baidu unveiled PaddlePaddle 3.0, the company’s AI deep learning platform, along with the updated AI model.
The new platform offers developers features such as cross-hardware interoperability for ultra-large-scale models, compiler optimisation, parallel processing, and integration for training and inference capabilities.
According to Baidu, the framework currently serves 370,000 companies and organisations in addition to over 14 million developers.
The business stated that 950,000 AI models have been created on its platform.
We earlier reported that despite escalating competition, Baidu said that Ernie Bot, their ChatGPT AI rival chatbot, has amassed over 200 million users, solidifying its position as the top chatbot in China.