Chinese tech giant Baidu said on Tuesday the number of people using its artificial intelligence chatbot “Ernie Bot” has doubled to more than 200 million.
‘Ernie Bot’ is China’s most popular ChatGPT-like chatbot, and the company is keen to maintain that status, amid increasing competition.
The number of users has shot up since the company’s last update in December. The chatbot was released to the public eight months ago.
ALSO SEE: China Providing 90% of Chips Used in Russia, Despite Sanctions
Baidu chief executive Robin Li also said Ernie Bot’s application programming interface (API) is being used 200 million times every day, meaning the chatbot was requested by its user to conduct tasks that many times a day.
The number of enterprise clients for the chatbot reached 85,000, Li said at a conference in Shenzhen.
In February, he told analysts Baidu was starting to generate revenue from Ernie, and in the fourth quarter the company had earned several hundred million yuan using AI to improve its ad services and help other companies build their own models.
Last March, Ernie Bot was the first locally developed ChatGPT-like chatbot to be announced in China, but it only won approval for public release in August, one of the first eight AI chatbots that Beijing approved.
Unlike many other countries, China requires companies to obtain approval before rolling out generative AI services.
Moonshot’s Kimi growing but ChatGPT tops
Recent data shows that rival domestic AI services, particularly the “Kimi” chatbot from a 12-month-old, Alibaba-backed startup named Moonshot AI, are quickly catching up with Ernie Bot.
Ernie Bot was visited a total of 14.9 million times across its app and website last month, while Kimi had a total of 12.6 million visits in the same month, data from AIcpb.com, a site that tracks user visits to online AI services, showed.
And Kimi was growing much faster, with visits jumping 321.6% in March from February, while the number of visits to Ernie Bot grew more than 48%, the data showed.
Globally, Chinese generative AI services still lag far behind their Western counterparts. According to AIcpb.com, OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains the world’s most popular generative AI service, with total traffic growing 9% to reach 1.86 billion views last month.
In recent months, China has accelerated approvals for AI services after highlighting AI as a key area in tech where China will have to compete with the US.
Last week, state media reported 117 large AI models have received approvals so far.
- Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard
ALSO SEE:
US Releases Detailed Rules For Export Curbs on AI Chips to China
TSMC Reaps Dividends of AI Boom as Revenue Beats Forecasts
Fears Rising on Impacts From Unrestrained AI Projects
China Ramps Up AI Push, Eyes $1.4tn Industry By 2030 – Xinhua
US Lawmakers’ Fury Over Huawei’s Intel AI Chip-Powered Laptop
US ‘Drawing Up List of Sanctioned Advanced Chinese Chip Fabs’
China Bans Government Computers From Using Intel, AMD Chips: FT
China’s Retaliatory Bans Could Cost US Tech Giants Billions
US Curbs Set Off Sales, Tech Boom for China Chip Equipment Firms
Threat of More Chip Curbs Spurs Warnings on China Innovation
