Baidu's founder, Robin Li, recently shared some big news: their AI chatbot, Ernie 4.0, is now on par with OpenAI’s GPT-4. This is a big step for China in the AI world.
At an event in Beijing, Li showed off what Ernie 4.0 can do. He asked it questions, and it gave answers right away. Ernie now has 45 million users. That's a lot, but ChatGPT has more with 180 million. Still, ChatGPT started earlier.
People sometimes call Baidu the "Google of China." They're hoping that with Ernie, they can get ahead of other big companies in China. But on the day they talked about Ernie, Baidu's stock price went down a little.
ChatGPT has shown that this kind of AI can change things in a big way. So, Baidu and other companies in China are investing a lot in it. But there are some challenges. The US has rules that make it hard for China to get some AI technology. And China has its own rules about what can be on the internet.
Li said, "Ernie is just as good as GPT-4." He showed people how Ernie works by asking it different questions. This was different from earlier in March, when they showed Ernie in a video.
A few months ago, Baidu said Ernie was even better than another version of ChatGPT. They hope Ernie will help them grow their business and get more users.
Baidu has added Ernie to many of their products, like search and maps. The Chinese government likes this kind of technology because it can help businesses and the economy.
In August, China said some new AI services could be used in the country. This included Ernie. On the first day, a lot of people downloaded Ernie on their iPhones.
