The largest search engine in China, Baidu’s AI-powered Ernie Bot, has hit an impressive milestone with over 100 million users. This remarkable triumph was achieved after the tech giant decided to make its AI bot accessible to the public in August following a partial unveiling and a five-month trial period for selected users.
Ernie Bot comes amidst a fast-growing market where dozens of competitors have since ventured into developing their own chatbots powered by generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). This type of AI uses machine learning techniques to generate data similar to what it is trained on. Its applications range from autonomous vehicles and computer-aided design to creating conversational bots like Ernie.
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A noteworthy entrant among these chatbots is ChatGPT launched in late 2022. It swiftly became the fastest-growing software application worldwide within six months of its introduction.
In accordance with SuperCLUE ranking— an evaluation scale used for measuring the performance of different chatbots —Ernie Bot takes the lead among all Chinese-made chatbots. However, even with this success, there remains room for growth as Ernie’s score stands at 79.02; more than ten points lower than the latest version of ChatGPT. Despite increasing competition, Baidu’s achievement sets high expectations for future developments in the burgeoning sphere of AI technology.
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