Males work together with a Baidu AI robotic close to the corporate emblem at its headquarters in Beijing, China April 23, 2021.
Florence Lo | Reuters
SHENZHEN — Baidu CEO Robin Li mentioned Tuesday the corporate’s ChatGPT-like Ernie bot has exceeded 200 million customers.
He added the corporate would maintain one other spherical of its AI growth competitors, and supply a prize of fifty million yuan ($7 million).
Li, who can be co-founder and chairman of Baidu, was delivering a gap speech titled “Everyone seems to be a Developer” at Baidu’s AI Create convention. About 5,000 folks had been in attendance on the occasion, in accordance with the corporate.
Li demonstrated three growth instruments—AgentBuilder, AppBuilder, and ModelBuilder. The instruments create and combine AI-powered chatbots with Baidu internet search, or enable customers to create purposes with none coding data, in accordance with the corporate.
Baidu launched its ChatGPT-like chatbot Ernie bot greater than a 12 months in the past, and acquired the inexperienced mild from Beijing for public use in August.
The chatbot is predicated on Baidu’s massive language mannequin Ernie. Smartphone firms Samsung and Honor have built-in Ernie’s AI capabilities with sure cell units.
As of December, about 26,000 companies had been actively accessing Ernie’s capabilities on a month-to-month foundation, in accordance with Baidu. Ernie was dealing with greater than 50 million queries on daily basis, the corporate claimed.
“In 2024, we count on AI revenues contribution to turn out to be extra significant, whereas our core enterprise will stay resilient,” Li mentioned throughout a late February earnings name, in accordance with a FactSet transcript.
Baidu is about to launch first-quarter outcomes on Could 16.
The worldwide rush to develop AI capabilities, particularly tapping the tech’s skill to generate content material, has led to a surge in demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing items. These chips are important for offering the computing energy wanted to run and prepare AI massive language fashions.
U.S. export controls, introduced within the final two years, have restricted China’s entry to such high-end semiconductors.
Li mentioned in February that Baidu’s AI chip reserve “permits us to proceed enhancing Ernie for the subsequent one or two years.”
Earlier this month, Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai mentioned in an interview with Norges Financial institution Funding Administration that he estimated that China was about two years behind the U.S. by way of AI growth.
Many analysts count on Chinese language firms will be capable of discover an AI edge on the applying entrance.
China’s AI market — consisting largely of {hardware}, adopted by software program and companies — is about to exceed $26 billion in dimension by 2026, up from slightly below $15 billion final 12 months, in accordance with Barclays estimates.
The analysts estimate China’s spending on “digital transformation” will develop by 19.2% between 2023 and 2026, outpacing a projected worldwide enhance of 15.6%.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
