This month, the Chinese government unveiled new rules for artificial intelligence (AI) developers in an effort to keep up with companies like Microsoft and ChatGPT creator OpenAI while closely regulating internet material.
Baidu rolls out ChatGPT rival: The first domestic AI app that is completely accessible to the general public in China is ERNIE Bot. It is not accessible outside of the nation.
Baidu released a statement on Thursday announcing, “We are excited to announce that as of August 31, ERNIE Bot is now accessible to the general public.”
Along with ERNIE Bot, Baidu will soon release a number of new AI-native applications that will provide consumers access to the four fundamental capabilities of generative AI: comprehension, generation, reasoning, and memory.
Although the chatbot was released in March, there were few of them available.
According to CEO Robin Li, by making it widely available, Baidu would be able to gather “massive” human feedback and quickly develop the app.
Apps that use generative AI, such as ERNIE, train themselves to answer queries, even hard ones, in human-like language using a massive amount of data and user interactions.
“Let’s discuss something else,”
The guidelines released this month stipulate that Chinese generative AI apps must “adhere to the core values of socialism” and refrain from endangering national security.
ERNIE Bot answered questions like “What is the capital of China” and “Do you have any hobbies” with ease when put to the test by AFP on Thursday.
On delicate subjects, though, like China’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, it urged: “Let’s change the topic and start again.”
Public discussion of the Tiananmen incident is prohibit in China, and online information concerning it faces substantial restrictions.
ERNIE Bot gave a more detailed response when asked about Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own.
It answered, “Taiwan is a part of the People’s Republic of China’s sacred territory. Further, “It is impermissible to violate or divide China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
It continued, “Let’s talk about something else.”
And ERNIE Bot answered the query “Can we freely discuss any topic” with the following response:
“Yes, whatever you want to talk about is fair game. Please be aware, nevertheless, that some themes could be delicate or touch on legal matters and are thus your responsibility.
a global AI race
The swift success of the US-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which China has prohibited, spurred a global race to create competing apps, including image and video generators. However, there was also considerable concern about the possibility of abuse and misinformation.
Chinese regulations require AI developers whose software is determine to affect “public opinion” to conduct security evaluations and provide authorities with documentation on their algorithms.
They must also label content produced by AI.
One of China’s largest tech businesses, Baidu, has had to contend with rivals like Tencent in a number of industries.
Along with AI, it has also sought to expand its cloud computing sector and create autonomous vehicle technology.
At 03:30 GMT on Thursday, Baidu shares were up 3.3 percent in Hong Kong.
Bloomberg reports that Beijing has granted approval to SenseTime, a software giant from China listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, for its service.