Baidu CEO Robin Li speaks at the company’s Create conference in Shenzhen, China on April 16, 2024.
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SHENZHEN, China – A year after Chinese search engine operator Baidu released the ChatGPT-like Erniebot, the company this week unveiled a tool to encourage local residents to develop artificial intelligence applications.
“Today’s China has one billion Internet users, a strong foundation model, sufficient AI application scenarios, and the world’s most complete industrial system,” CEO Robin Li said in Baidu’s annual AI report on Tuesday. He said this in his opening speech at a developer conference.
“Anyone can be a developer,” he said in Chinese, according to a CNBC translation.
While many point out how China lags behind the United States in artificial intelligence capabilities, others emphasize that the Chinese market’s strength lies in the application of technology. For example, consider next-day e-commerce or his 30-minute food delivery.
Baidu’s newly announced AI tool allows anyone with no coding knowledge to create generative AI-powered chatbots with specific functionality that can be used on websites, Baidu search engine results, or other online portals. can be integrated into This is different from a similar tool called GPT that OpenAI launched earlier this year. Because inside his ChatGPT interface is a custom-built chatbot that can be used for everything from movie suggestions to code fixes.
Basic Baidu tools are typically free to try, up to certain usage limits, as are some of Google’s cloud and AI capabilities. OpenAI charges a monthly fee for the latest version of ChatGPT and the ability to use it for computer programs. The older ChatGPT 3.5 model is free to use, but custom-built GPT is not accessible.
Baidu also announced three new versions of its Ernie AI model this week, called “Speed,” “Lite,” and “Tiny.” These models can be selectively accessed by programmers based on the complexity of the task.
“It feels like they are focused on building an entire native AI development ecosystem and providing a full set of development tools and platform solutions,” said Bo Du, managing director of WestSummit Capital Management. Stated. According to a CNBC translation of China’s statement:
Baidu announced this week that the Ernie bot has amassed more than 200 million users since its launch last March, with the computer program accessing the underlying AI model 200 million times a day. The company says more than 85,000 enterprise customers have created 190,000 AI applications using its AI cloud platform.
Many of the use cases Baidu unveiled this week focused on consumer-facing applications, such as tourism and content creation such as picture books and meeting scheduling.
In the demonstration hall, Baidu’s business division showed off how AI tools can be integrated with virtual people doing live streams and directing search engine traffic to AI-based interactive buying guides.
Buysmart.AI, which won Baidu’s AI competition last year, uses the technology for an online shopping assistant connected to Chinese social media platform Weibo.The startup said it is using his ChatGPT for a standalone interactive e-commerce app in the US.
“Personally, I think Ernie 4.0 understands Chinese better than ChatGPT 3.5,” Andy Qiu, co-founder of Buysmart.AI, said in an interview. He said this in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation:
Qiu said American consumers are currently more interested in AI products than Chinese users. But he said there is still room for improvement overall when it comes to building consumer trust in AI assistants and encouraging users to place orders.
Also on display was a humanoid robot developed by Shenzhen-based UBTech Robotics, which used Baidu’s Ernie AI model to understand commands and read written words.
At this point, it is not immediately clear how such AI applications can significantly change business. But Baidu is the latest company to roll out more tools to make it easier and cheaper for people to experiment.
Helen Chai, managing director of CIC Consulting, pointed out that customer service, voice assistants, and internet-connected devices can use smaller AI models to quickly respond to users.
He added that in scenarios such as legal consultation or medical diagnosis, small-scale AI models can be trained on specific data to achieve performance comparable to large-scale AI models.
Baidu CEO Li said that in the future, large-scale AI-based applications will be based on mixed models, using the technical term “mixture of experts” or MoE.
He also touted Baidu’s capabilities in AI-generated code, one of the areas where Silicon Valley tech companies see the most potential for generative AI.
Baidu said that since introducing its AI coding assistant “Comate” a year ago, the tool has contributed to 27% of the company’s newly generated code. According to Baidu, audio streaming app Ximalaya, IT services company iSoftStone, and Shanghai Mitsubishi Elevator are among its more than 10,000 enterprise users, who have adopted nearly half of the code the tool generates. Masu.
The global rush to develop generative AI is creating a shortage of semiconductors needed to provide the computing power. Chinese companies face further constraints from U.S. chip export restrictions.
Baidu did not specifically discuss the lack of computing power during the main conference session. In his speech, Dou Shen, Baidu’s head of AI cloud, cited “uncertainty” in the chip supply chain, saying Baidu has access to the capabilities of several different types of chips. We announced that we have a platform.
Back in February, Li said in an earnings call that Baidu’s AI chip reserves “will allow us to continue to strengthen Arnie over the next year or two.” The company is scheduled to announce its first quarter results on May 16th.