China’s Baidu has rolled out its ChatGPT rival ERNIE Bot to the public, in a major leap for the country’s tech sector as it aims to cash in on the artificial intelligence gold rush.
The Chinese government introduced new regulations this month for AI developers, aiming to allow them to stay in the race with the likes of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Microsoft while tightly controlling information online.
ERNIE Bot is the first domestic AI app to be fully available to the public in China. It is not available outside the country.
In addition to ERNIE Bot, Baidu is set to launch a suite of new AI-native apps that allow users to fully experience the four core abilities of generative AI: understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory.