Search engine giant Baidu opened Ernie Bot to the public in August 2023. This was preceded by a five-month trial period during which selected users could test the chatbot's capabilities. Since then, the chatbot has attracted more than 100 million customers.
This chat is based on the large language model Ernie 4.0, announced on October 17, 2023. According to a ranking published Thursday by SuperCLUE, which evaluates generative AI-based chatbots, Ernie Bot leads all Chinese chatbots. But its score is 79.02, which is more than 10 points lower than the latest version of ChatGPT.
Despite its rather high efficiency, the chatbot has significant drawbacks. Ernie Bot is subject to the Chinese government's censorship regime, so, as the media found out, it does not answer questions about Xi Jinping, the Uighur genocide, the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests. At the same time, he is spreading misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that COVID-19 originated among American e-cigarette users.
American company Open AI launched its chatbot with artificial intelligence ChatGPT at the end of 2022. In six months, her app became the fastest growing app in the world, surpassing 100 million users in two months. Later, this record was surpassed by the Threads platform.