In March, Baidu will complete testing of its “Ernie Bot” ChatGPT-like project

As interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) grows, China’s Baidu Inc. announced on Tuesday that it would finish the testing process of an “Ernie Bot”-inspired ChatGPT initiative in March.

A significant AI-powered speech model called Ernie was unveiled in 2019, according to Baidu, and stands for “Advanced Representation via Integrating.” It claimed that over time, the system had developed to the point where it could now carry out operations like language production, language understanding, and text-to-image conversion.

The Hong Kong-listed shares of global search engine leader Baidu increased by as much as 13.4% in response to the information.

Reuters was informed by a source with knowledge of the situation last week that Baidu intended to introduce this service in March. According to the source, Baidu plans to make the service accessible as a stand-alone application and progressively incorporate chatbot-generated answers into its search engine when users conduct searches.

Technology called creative artificial intelligence, which can produce text or other content at will and free up the time of white-collar professionals, has attracted a lot of venture capital funding and curiosity from tech companies, particularly in Silicon Valley.

The category is defined by ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that has generated a lot of excitement since its November debut. Although ChatGPT is not accessible in China, some people have discovered solutions.

Microsoft Corp. has reportedly looked into extending its $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI. In an effort to counter Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the business has also attempted to incorporate OpenAI’s image-generation algorithms into its Bing search engine.

Microsoft’s own AI announcement is scheduled for Tuesday.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced in a website post on Monday that his business is launching a conversational AI programme called Bard to gather feedback from users before making it available to the general public in the upcoming weeks. He also mentioned Google’s plans to integrate AI into its search engine so that it can synthesise content for difficult queries.

On other tech developments, Beijing-based Baidu was a pioneer in China. The business introduced “XiRang” as China’s first metaverse network in late 2021, just as the term “metaverse” was becoming popular. However, the platform received harsh criticism for not providing a highly interactive experience, and Baidu claimed it was still under development.

The business has made significant investments in AI technologies, particularly in cloud services, semiconductors, and automated vehicles, in an effort to expand its revenue streams.