According to Decrypt, Baidu's AI chatbot, Ernie Bot, has reached over 100 million users since its public launch in August. The announcement was made by Haifeng Wang, Baidu's chief technology officer, at a deep learning summit in Beijing. Baidu, China's largest internet company, holds more than 76 percent of the country's internet market share, with over 705 million internet users this year. The company's founder, Robin Li, introduced Ernie 4.0 at the Baidu World event, claiming it to be a superior version of its predecessors, particularly Ernie 3.5. Li compared Ernie 4.0 to OpenAI's GPT-4 model, stating that it is the best-performing Chinese LLM according to the SUPERGLUE benchmark.
Ernie Bot is part of Baidu's broader strategy to incorporate advanced AI into its various internet services. With China's population estimated to be 1.4 billion people in 2023, Ernie Bot's 100 million users represent a significant market penetration, potentially reaching 7% of the population. It is important to note that Ernie Bot appears to have a regional focus, requiring a Chinese phone number for registration. This suggests a more localized approach compared to the globally accessible ChatGPT, which reached 100 million users two months after its launch. Baidu did not respond to Decrypt's request for comment, and the publication could not independently verify the company's claims.
Baidu's focus on enhancing and expanding its AI capabilities with Ernie Bot reflects the tech industry's broader push towards more sophisticated and integrated artificial intelligence solutions. The rapid development and deployment of Ernie Bot highlight the competitive nature of the AI and tech space, where innovation and user-base growth are crucial indicators of success. Baidu's achievements with Ernie Bot are particularly noteworthy, considering the challenges posed by local Chinese dialects and Mandarin, which require extensive training due to their complex syntactic structure.